Radical Ambivalence - (Studies in the Catholic Imagination: The Flannery O'Connor Trust) by Angela Alaimo O'Donnell

About the Book

Radical Ambivalence: Race in Flannery O'Connor, the first book-length study of O'Connor's complex and sometimes troubling attitude towards race in her fiction and correspondence, contends that O'Connor's race-haunted writing serves as the literary incarnation of her uncertainty about the great question of her era and of her urgent need, despite considerable reluctance, to address the fraught relationship between the races.

Book Synopsis

Radical Ambivalence is the first book-length study of Flannery O'Connor's 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 It is also the first study to include controversial material from unpublished letters that reveals the complex and troubling nature of O'Connor's thoughts on the subject. O'Connor 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, O'Connor 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 O'Connor's fiction.

Review Quotes

This is the first significant book-length work to address race in O'Connor... By focusing on ambivalence as the primary attitude that O'Connor held toward African Americans and toward political and social questions bound up with race in the U.S. South, Radical Ambivalence provides the most nuanced account of what there is to be said on the topic thus far.---Thomas F. Haddox, University of Tennessee

Any future discussion of O'Connor and race must take Radical Ambivalence as its necessary point of departure.-- "Christianity & Literature"

As the country continues to reel from racial injustice and police brutality, many American find themselves once again questioning their legacy of white privilege and their own complicity in structural racism. Angela Alaimo O'Donnell's new book, Radical Ambivalence: Race in Flannery O'Connor, is a welcome opportunity for readers to grapple with this legacy in the life and work of one of the most talented writers of the 20th century.-- "America Magazine"

Representation of race in O'Connor's fiction has been addressed in articles and book chapters, but Radical Ambivalence is the first book devoted exclusively to the subject.-- "Choice"

Few scholars have considered O'Connor's talent and life with as much depth and breadth as Angela Alaimo O'Donnell, a
Fordham University professor who has written critical examinations of O'Connor's work and life, and has even channeled
the classic story writer's voice in poems. O'Donnell's appreciation for O'Connor makes her the perfect critic to write a necessary, complex book about O'Connor's views on race. Radical Ambivalence: Race in Flannery O'Connor is a significant, challenging work of criticism.

---Nick Ripatrazone, Angelus News

About the Author

Angela Alaimo O'Donnell is a professor, writer, and poet at Fordham University and the Associate Director of Fordham's Curran Center for American Catholic Studies. Among her recent books are Flannery O'Connor: Fiction Fired by Faith (Liturgical, 2015) and Andalusian Hours: Poems from the Porch of Flannery O'Connor (Paraclete, 2020).