How am I to be heard?

by Lillian Eugenia Smith

How Am I to Be Heard?: Letters of Lillian Smith offers the first full portrait of the life and work of the foremost southern white liberal of the mid-twentieth century. Writer Lillian Smith (1897-1966) devoted her life to lifting the veil of southern self-deception about race, class, gender, and sexuality. Her books, essays, and especially her letters boldly explored the ways in which the South's attitudes and institutions perpetuated a dehumanizing experience for all its people - white and black, male and female, rich and poor. Smith's best-known books are Strange Fruit (1944), a bestselling interracial love story that brought her international acclaim; and Killer of the Dream (1949), an autobiographical critique of southern race relations that angered many southerners, including powerful moderates. Subsequently, Smith was effectively silenced as a writer.^ An avid letter-writer, Smith mastered the epistolary form in her work as director of her family's Laurel Falls Camp, an innovativ