52 pages • 1 hour read
Call Your Daughter Home
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Background
Authorial Context: Deborah Spera and Historical Fiction
Deborah Spera grew up in Louisville, Kentucky, and was greatly influenced by her great-grandmother and grandmother, who lived in the town that inspires the backdrop of Call Your Daughter Home. She was particularly impressed by the strength of these women, who weathered the economic hardships of the Boll Weevil Infestation of 1915-1916 and the Great Depression of the 1930s. Though the novel is fictionalized, it is based on these real historical events. The central characters in the novel are based on Spera’s great-grandmother and grandmother, who represent tough, resourceful Southern women.
Cultural Context: The Southern Culture of Honor
The judgmental behavior and conspiracy of silence within the Branchville community is symptomatic of the wider values of the American South, known as the Southern Culture of Honor. This was particularly prominent during the 19th and early 20th centuries, the time in which the novel is set. One of the book’s characters sums up the attitude, saying, “Polite make-believe is weary business, and there is no one better at this than Southerners” (320).
Honor culture in the South rests on the importance of a person’s reputation. Damage to someone’s reputation has real-world consequences, including creating a stigma that can follow a family for generations. For this reason, members of this society maintain a façade of proper behavior at all times.
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