One Thousand White Women: The Journals of May Dodd

How does the novel’s nested structure—combining an Introduction, an epistolary account, and a Codicil—function as a counter-history that challenges official records and validates marginalized perspectives? In what ways does this layered narrative invite the reader to question truth itself, and how does its form blur the boundary between testimony, myth, and revisionism?

Compare the strategies of resistance and adaptation employed by May Dodd, Phemie Washington, and Helen Flight. How do their distinct backgrounds shape their methods of survival, and what does the novel ultimately argue about the personal agency within systemic oppression?

Examine how Jim Fergus uses juxtaposition to deconstruct the binary between “civilized” and “savage” societies. How does the novel’s shifting tone and perspective complicate moral judgments, and to what extent does it succeed—or fail—in overturning the hierarchy it critiques?