William Faulkner Turned His Mississippi Hometown Into Literary History
Our American Stories
iHeartPodcasts
4.6 • 817 Ratings
🗓️ 28 May 2026
⏱️ 30 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
On this episode of Our American Stories, William Faulkner spent most of his life in Oxford, where he wrote novels focused on the people, conflicts, and tensions of the modern South. The town around him became the basis for Yoknapatawpha County, the fictional setting that would define much of his work and help establish his place in American literature. Some locals did not always appreciate it, after all, their stories sometimes found their way into Faulkner’s fiction, for better or worse.
Rachel Hudson of Rowan Oak shares how Faulkner wrote about Mississippi in a way that unsettled local readers and helped change the direction of Southern literature.
Support the show (https://www.ouramericanstories.com/donate)
Support the show: https://www.ouramericanstories.com/donate
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | This is an I-Heart podcast. |
| 0:02.6 | Guaranteed human. |
| 0:14.0 | And we return to our American stories. |
| 0:17.3 | Up next, we'll bring you the story of the novelist famous around the world for his story |
| 0:22.4 | set in the fictional Yachtna Patafa County, which is based on Lafayette County, Mississippi, |
| 0:29.0 | the town the author William Faulkner grew up in. Rachel Hudson of Rowan Oak, William Faulkner's |
| 0:35.0 | home that is open to the public as a museum, brings us the story |
| 0:39.0 | of this introverted, interesting man. |
| 0:44.1 | William Faulkner is, I think, the reason why Southern literature is such a popular genre |
| 0:51.5 | even for today. |
| 0:53.1 | He was one of the first Southern writers to write about a modern South, |
| 0:58.0 | kind of straying away from this Gone with the Wind South |
| 1:02.0 | and focusing on how the South is healing and growing from the Civil War |
| 1:08.0 | and how it's evolving during the turn of the 20th century. |
| 1:11.6 | It's interesting that William Faulkner grew up in Mississippi, lived in Mississippi, and |
| 1:16.5 | wrote about Mississippi. So many Southern authors tend to reflect on where they're from after |
| 1:23.3 | leaving the South. That seems to be a common thing. But Faulkner knew that there was just something |
| 1:29.3 | special about his native soil, as he said, here in Mississippi. He was a private person. He may |
| 1:36.5 | have been a binge drinker, but he was revolutionary when it came to Southern Lit. |
| 1:47.8 | Faulkner is a Mississippian down to the bone. |
| 1:50.2 | He was born in New Albany, Mississippi, |
| 1:53.5 | which is about 20 to 30 miles outside of Oxford. |
... |
Transcript will be available on the free plan in 18 days. Upgrade to see the full transcript now.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from iHeartPodcasts, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of iHeartPodcasts and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.