Radical Ambivalence: Race in Flannery O'Connor

by Angela Alaimo O'Donnell

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 It is also the first study to include controversial material from unpublished letters that reveals the complex and troubling nature of O’Connor’s thoughts on the subject.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.

233 pages, Kindle Edition

Published June 2, 2020

Reviews

[Monica · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is such a crucially needed book right now, as evidenced by the responses to it in places like The New Yorker and The Bitter Southerner. O’Donnell takes on the treatment of race in O’Connor’s fiction and her letters, addressing head-on the seeming differences in her clear racist attitudes in her letters and her often complex treatment of race and racism in her fiction. I appreciate that she rejects any attempts at resolution, but instead investigates how these different attitudes and approaches can illuminate each other.

[Susan Sink · Rating 4 out of 5]

Why read a book that elucidates Flannery O'Connor's racism? Because especially at this time it is important to understand how white privilege works. And this book shows us how O'Connor, living a life of privilege in the Jim Crow South, wrestled with the issue of race in her stories, novels, and letters. It was wonderful to revisit the stories discussed in this book, and also see what O'Connor got right, even as she embraced and defended the system of "manners" that reinforced segregation and maintained her position of privilege. O'Donnell's scholarship here is first rate and deep, and she publishes some excerpts from O'Connor's letters for the first time.

Flannery O'Connor is a tough nut to crack, and her work is both delightful and challenging. I know I've never been able to figure out how she pushes everything-- her characters, her point of view, her language, her imagery-- to the very edge and yet maintains the "realness" of the world she is describing. This book opens another door on that feat. If you're a fan of O'Connor or just want to see someone wrestling with race in America (and up to her death in 1964, failing to be a strong voice against an unjust system and culture), read this book.

[Joan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Starts off well - dedicated to Professor Richard Giannone who I was privileged to learn from as an undergrad.

[NDH · Rating 1 out of 5]

I came to this book because I wanted to assess the author’s “not mea culpa” as expressed in her article “The Canceling of Flannery o’Connor: It Should Never Have Happened”. In the interim, I also read and reviewed here AAODs book on FOC “Fiction Fired by Faith” whose final chapter gives a preview of “Radical Ambivalence.”

The short version of my assessment is that AAOD is fully (although not solely) responsible for the cancellation of FOC. AAOD designed and produced the weapon and Paul Elie made the hit with his article in the New Yorker. Anyone could have predicted that such would be the course of events, and for AAOD to pretend that her work was merely disinterested scholarship—the pursuit of Truth— is disingenuous. At best, disingenuous.

I might suggest mitigating factors that could lessen somewhat her guilt. After all, AAOD has marinated for a good number of years in that sub-culture which we know as Academia (and none of us can truly escape the clutches of our culture, or our genes, can we…) She embraces enthusiastically and uncritically that fashionable bit of theorizing known as “critical whiteness studies”. She even seems almost pleased with her cleverness in convicting FOC of the original sin of whiteness—southern mid-century whiteness to be more precise—and, while at it, convicting the Catholic Church of ineradicable Euro-centric white male racism. So, in AAODs defense, she really can’t help seeing the world the way her peers in Academia, and at the New Yorker, expect her to.

But, fundamentally, AAOD knew, or should have known, what was going to happen, especially during that election-year summer of 2020. She does give us a glimpse of her politics at the time, though I’ll not comment on what they seem to be and probably still are (in 2025). In light of what probably would have happened at Loyola Maryland when classes resumed in the fall 2020, I am, however, inclined to soften my criticism of the President of that university. He still merits the title of “coward” (small C this time), but perhaps he was merely practicing Discretion. Maybe some day when (if) people are less insane, the name of one of America’s finest and most devout Catholic writers will once again adorn dormitories at some of its once-upon-a-time-great Catholic universities.

That seems like a good project in which AAOC could invest her talents. Think of it as Atonement.