Radical Ambivalence

Radical Ambivalence is the first book-length study of Flannery OConnors attitude toward race in her fiction and correspondence. It is also the first study to include controversial material from unpublished letters that reveals the complex and troubling nature of OConnors thoughts on the subject. OConnor lived and did most of her writing in her native Georgia during the tumultuous years of the civil rights movement. In one of her letters, OConnor frankly expresses her double-mindedness regarding the social and political upheaval taking place in the United States with regard to race: I hope that to be of two minds about some things is not to be neutral. Radical Ambivalence explores this double-mindedness and how it manifests itself in OConnors fiction.