"Best of" the C19 Podcast | Who Was Charles Chesnutt?

C19: America in the 19th Century

In anticipation of the launch of Season Six – in just a few weeks! – we are sharing favorites from our expanding archive. With this episode we return to an oft-cited conversation from our first year about Charles Waddell Chesnutt (1858-1932), a figure who remains central to nineteenth-century African American literary studies. Scholars have drawn attention to the subtlety, wit, and complexity of Chesnutt’s stories, novels, and essays, which were – at one time – regarded as pandering and old-fashioned. Yet, despite the ongoing boom in Chesnutt scholarship, we still know relatively little about his life, and the general reading public rarely encounters his work. Tess Chakkalakal (Bowdoin College) hopes to change that with her biography of Chesnutt aimed toward a general readership (forthcoming from St. Martin's-McMillian, 2024). In this episode, she sits down with Mark Sussman to talk about discoveries in Chesnutt's life, the challenges of writing for a general audience, and why Chesnutt matters now. This episode originally appeared on January 15, 2018.