The Wind Done Gone is the first novel written by Alice Randall. The novel is a parody of Gone With the Wind (1936), a famous American novel written by Margaret Mitchell, which was also adapated into one of the most popular American films of all time.

Plot summary

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The plot of Gone With the Wind revolves around a hard-working Southern woman named Scarlett O'Hara, who lives through the American Civil War and Reconstruction. The Wind Done Gone is the same story, but told from the viewpoint of Scarlett's half-sister Cynara, a mulatto slave on Scarlett's plantation (see History of slavery in the United States); the title is a Black English vernacular sentence that might be rendered "The Wind Has Gone" in standard English.

The book consciously avoids using the names of Mitchell's characters or locations. Cynara refers to her sister as "Other", and to Other's husband as "R". Other is in love with "Dreamy Gentleman", although he is married to "Mealymouth". The magnificence of Tara is reduced to "Tata" or "Cotton Farm", and Twelve Oaks is renamed for its builders, "Twelve Slaves Strong as Trees".

Legal controversy

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The estate of Margaret Mitchell, controlled by her descendants, sued Randall and her publishing company, Houghton Mifflin, on the grounds that The Wind Done Gone was too similar to Gone With the Wind, thus infringing its copyright. The case attracted numerous comments from leading scholars, authors, and activists, regarding what Mitchell's attitudes would have been, and how much The Wind Done Gone copies from its predecessor. After the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit vacated an injunction against publishing the book in Suntrust v. Houghton Mifflin (2001), the case was settled in 2002 when Houghton Mifflin agreed to make an unspecified donation to Morehouse College, a historically African American college in Atlanta, Georgia in exchange for Mitchell's estate dropping the litigation.

References

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External links

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2001 novels | American novels