We Are the Living

Viking Press published the collection in September 1933. 16 of its 20 stories were previously published in various magazines, while four -- "The Medicine Man," "Meddlesome Jack," "The Grass Fire," and "A Woman in the House" -- were new.[1]

Some stories in the collection are humorous or satirical, while others are lyrical, romantic and/or tragic. Several of them are laid against the background of the lives of ordinary people in the contemporary US South,[2] the social milieu most familiar to the author; some are specifically located in his home state of Georgia.

The stories in the book include:

• "Warm River"
• "We Are Looking at You, Agnes"
• "The People's Choice"
• "Indian Summer"
• "Rachel"
• "The Medicine Man"
• "Picking Cotton"
• "Meddlesome Jack"
• "The Picture"
• "Yellow Girl"
• "August Afternoon"
• "Mama's Little Girl"
• "The First Autumn"
• "After-Image"
• "Crown-Fire"
• "The Empty Room"
• "Over the Green Mountains"
• "The Grass Fire"
• "A Woman in the House"
• "Country Full of Swedes"

Biographer Wayne Mixon wrote that We are the Living largely "went unnoticed in the southern press." Mixon suggests that the inclusion of "August Afternoon" -- a story about a lazy white farmer, a drifter who seduces the farmer's wife, and his Black field hand who refuses Vic's order to accost him -- was to blame.[2]

TIME magazine, reviewing the collection in 1933, highlighted Caldwell's more bawdy, humorous stories as standouts. Of those, they wrote: "Mark Twain would have roared over [these stories] -- in private."[3]

• Cover of the first edition