Erskine Caldwell, God's Little Acre

Christopher Rieger (Southeast Missouri State University)

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Ed. by Stephen E. Meats, Pittsburg State University
The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 3.2.4: American (US) Writing and Culture: Postwar and Contemporary, 1945-present.
Vol. editors: Sofia Ahlberg (Uppsala University), Patrick Chura (University of Akron), Emory Elliott (University of California, Riverside), Dale Enggass (University of Utah), Christopher Hugh Gair (University of Glasgow), Matthew Hofer (University of New Mexico), Nicole Kennedy (University of Newcastle), Stephen E. Meats (Pittsburg State University), Kerry Myler (Birmingham Newman University), Justin Parks (UiT - The Arctic University of Norway), Nick Selby (University of East Anglia)

Dates

First circulation or publication 1933

Places

United States (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Novel

Resources

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God’s Little Acre

is Erskine Caldwell’s follow-up novel to

Tobacco Road

(1932), and it is considered by most critics to be Caldwell’s finest novel. While

Tobacco Road

illustrates the death of the pastoral ideal in Southern agriculture,

God’s Little Acre

continues Caldwell’s critique of the sharecropping and cotton farming while also investigating the textile mill as a possible replacement or positive alternative for Southern workers. While the novel is often categorized as proletarian fiction, it is perhaps better thought of as social protest fiction, since Caldwell is more interested in exposing class oppression and exploitative working conditions than he is in offering socialist or communist analyses or solutions.

The narrative alternates between Ty Ty Walden’s Georgia cotton

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1038 words

Citation: Rieger, Christopher. "God's Little Acre". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 15 July 2011 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=4954, accessed 01 April 2025.]