{"product_id":"imitation-of-life","title":"Imitation of Life","description":"A bestseller in 1933, and subsequently adapted into two beloved and controversial films, \u003ci\u003eImitation of Life\u003c\/i\u003e has played a vital role in ongoing conversations about race, femininity, and the American Dream. Bea Pullman, a white single mother, and her African American maid, Delilah Johnston, also a single mother, rear their daughters together and become business partners. Combining Bea's business savvy with Delilah's irresistible southern recipes, they build an Aunt Jemima-like waffle business and an international restaurant empire. Yet their public success brings them little happiness. Bea is torn between her responsibilities as a businesswoman and those of a mother; Delilah is devastated when her light-skinned daughter, Peola, moves away to pass as white. \u003ci\u003eImitation of Life\u003c\/i\u003e struck a chord in the 1930s, and it continues to resonate powerfully today.\u003cp\u003eThe author of numerous bestselling novels, a masterful short story writer, and an outspoken social activist, Fannie Hurst was a major celebrity in the first half of the twentieth century. Daniel Itzkovitz's introduction situates \u003ci\u003eImitation of Life\u003c\/i\u003e in its literary, biographical, and cultural contexts, addressing such topics as the debates over the novel and films, the role of Hurst's one-time secretary and great friend Zora Neale Hurston in the novel's development, and the response to the novel by Hurst's friend Langston Hughes, whose one-act satire, \"Limitations of Life\" (which reverses the races of Bea and Delilah), played to a raucous Harlem crowd in the late 1930s. This edition brings a classic of popular American literature back into print.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Duke University Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":50804552597736,"sku":"9780822333241","price":26.92,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0810\/9539\/3512\/files\/imageloader_ab7a3f38-79ac-4d25-b16c-61f8ec55e0ab.jpg?v=1790300061","url":"https:\/\/shop.kuumba.app\/products\/imitation-of-life","provider":"Kuumba","version":"1.0","type":"link"}