Race, work, and desire in American literature, 1860-1930

Introduction: working relations and racial desire

Dressing down the first lady: Elizabeth Keckley's Behind the scenes, or thirty years a slave and four years in the White House

Off-color patients in Frances E.W. Harper's Iola Leroy and W.D. Howells's An imperative duty

'Alien hands' in Kate Chopin's The awakening

'For blood that is not yours': Langston Hughes and the art of patronage

Epilogue: 'co-workers in the kingdom of culture'.