Pulitzer Book Club Inclusion Guide
"The Store"
by T.S. Stribling
INCLUSION MILESTONES
1933
• TVA, Public Works Admin, and Relief & Construction Act create public works jobs to address flooding, electricity, forests and build dams, bridges, schools, and hospitals.
AUTHOR INSPIRATIONS
Stribling enjoyed summers on his grandparents’ farm near Florence, Alabama. Family members were character inspo. Stribling practiced in the Florence law office of Governor Emmett O'Neal. Called Florence “filled with the most mellow and delightful folk” with “softness and floweriness which gave me precisely the sort of aesthetic relief which my ruthless narrative required.”
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Featured Reader
– Share your key take-away about inclusion in this book in a sentence or two.
– Write a paragraph or two (up to 250 words) to describe your thoughts on exclusion/inclusion in the book, why you related or did not connect with the book, and why you think reading, inclusion and dialog about inclusion matter.
– Identify the name and website address of a cause you support with an inclusive mission.
Dire, rippling consequences of former plantation overseer’s social standing grabs.
Master bigot orders woman he once raped to stand on hot stove, and reach up to hide his bag of stolen money.
Most aggressive use of the N-word.
Feels twice as long as 571 pages
Social injustice satire is a painful-to-read reminder of reality/history.
Post-Reconstruction bigotry at its worst. Abuse of rights of black people by legal system, Alabama governor. Whites vote Cleveland/ Dems to keep “niggers” down. Former overseer/KKK leader blackmails, revenge-steals, manipulates/bankrupts, sues, rapes, marries young daughter of first love, keeps ill-gotten gains. Religious hypocrisy outed. Good people come to bad ends: lynching, suicide, death in childbirth.
Misogyny, age-ism, fat-bashing, slurs toward Jewish.
Stores rip off Blacks. Innovator is Black schoolteacher.
If it’s Christmas, make roasted chicken, harmony, beans, cranberries, and stewed tomatoes for your lover and run off with him to New Orleans. Otherwise, dynamite mess of fish and serve with sweet potato and turnips. Warm milk with an egg yoke for anyone who might be pregnant; make sassafras tea for those who believe it’s a blood thinner.
“To be successful carries in it, the seeds of forgiveness and admiration.”
Find a spot a wannabe social climber built as a monument to his ego, ideally a classic 1880s home with a questionable renno involving granite Ionic (not Doric) capitals, gray granite piazza, porte-cochère, and an observatory.
Compare your response to how The Store was first received: best seller, U of North Alabama freshmen required reading, Florence townspeople considered legal action, Stribling apologizes.
Describe how bigots/white supremacists transitioned from slavery to Post-Reconstruction exploitation/discrimination against black people. Discuss tenant farming, practices in stores, suppression of education, violence, and the justice system.
How do religion and hypocrisy guide how characters relate? Compare wannabe Christians and eastern mystic.
Talk about the people involved in interracial relationships and their children (labeled miscegenation) in terms of beliefs and actions. What did family mean and how did it drive action?
What identities are people seeking and why?
How did social conditions fuel negative feelings/motivations: revenge, insecurity, fear, greed, egotism, jealously, desperation, disappointment? Who attempted to address underlying problems? When was there remorse, compassion or empathy?
How was the legal system flawed or perverted?
Talk about the mob violence mentality, process, and action as well as the reaction by the Governor and townspeople.
Have there been meaningful shifts in attitudes toward relationships with a significant age gap, or North versus South mentality since the time period of the novel (1880s)?
How do you feel about extensive use of the N-word by a novelist or a rap artist?
Start your journey with a history and music tour of Florence, Alabama. Stroll or bike historic districts and the Reservation. Note Dred Scott historic marker, Local History and Genealogy Room at the Florence-Lauderdale Public Library, and Stribling’s grave in Clifton Cemetery. Head out to T.S. Stribling Museum in Clifton, Tennessee and North Alabama Hallelujah Trail featuring churches 100+ years old on original sites where you can attend services.
Stribling’s novel Birthright was adapted as a movie (1924).
Other novels in Vaiden trilogy: The Forge (1931) and Unfinished Cathedral (1934). Stribling also wrote detective novels and a dozen other works of fiction. Novels focused on political and social issues include Bright Metal (1928), Strange Moon (1929), Clues of the Caribees (1929), and Backwater (1930).