SOURCE: “Negro Characters in the Fiction of Doris Betts,” in Critique, Vol. 17, No. 2, 1975, pp. 59–76.

In the following essay, Evans examines the portrayal of African-American characters in Betts's work.

The sensitive portrayal of Negro characters by Doris Betts creates realistic situations in which mild and explosive confrontations occur. Whether the Negro characters are stereotyped as servants or emerge as the moving force of social change, they are a necessary and convincing part of Betts' stories and novels. Writing of the small town in piedmont North Carolina, Betts has indeed established her place, that element where, Eudora Welty says, the writer “has his roots, place is where he stands; in his experience out of which he writes it provides the base of reference, in his work the point of view.”¹ Betts's saturation of place has made the roots flourish, and her command of subject has produced excellent fiction.

Her first...