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The Confessions of Nat Turner

Despite defenses by notable African-American authors Ralph Ellison and James Baldwin, the novel was strongly criticized by many African Americans. Styron's portrayal of a legendary black resistance leader as a reluctant warrior who bumbles every attack and fumbles his way to total defeat generated enormous resentment. No less offensive to many black readers was the narrator's flattering portrayal of many of the novel's slaveowners, such as the "saintly" Samuel Turner. The character of Margaret Whitehead, in particular, seemed to enrage black readers, as she is permitted to flirt with Nat and chatter on endlessly about her love for poor downtrodden blacks while remaining sunnily unaware of her own slave-owning status. For much of the novel Nat sighs over the slim, virginal blonde like a love-struck adolescent, while showing little or no interest in women of his own race.

Issues of class divided readers as well. While the white slaveowners in the novel, especially the wealthy ones, are represented as generous, courteous, and basically decent, poor whites are held up to ridicule as simpletons and deviants. Turner and his supporters (particularly the scene-stealing, scenery-chewing madman Will, who many readers saw as a thinly disguised version of black rock and roll pioneer Little Richard) are caricatured as disturbed, monstrous figures. Nat and his rival Will are both continually shown fantasizing about sexually assaulting white women. Critics took issue with Styron using the "myth of the black rapist", as portraying black men as prone to sexual violence against white women. Suspected sexual assault was a longstanding racist stereotype used as rhetorical justification for lynching black men.

In order to address these concerns, ten black intellectuals wrote essays criticizing the work, collected in William Styron's Nat Turner: Ten Black Writers Respond (1968). Elsewhere, historian Eugene D. Genovese defended Styron's right to imagine Turner as a fictional character.

Bill Clinton has cited the novel as one of his favorite books.

The Confessions of Nat Turner is a 1967 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by American writer William Styron. Presented as a first-person narrative by historical figure Nat Turner, the novel concerns the slave revolt in Virginia in 1831, but does not always depict the events accurately. It is based on The Confessions of Nat Turner: The Leader of the Late Insurrection in Southampton, Virginia, a first-hand account of Turner's confessions published by a local lawyer, Thomas Ruffin Gray, in 1831.

The novel is based on an extant document, the "confession" of Turner to the white lawyer Thomas Ruffin Gray. In the historical confessions, Turner claims to have been divinely inspired, charged with a mission from God to lead a slave uprising and destroy the white race. He claimed to receive messages, and these messages told him to follow through with his rebellion killing white families with their own weapons.

Styron's ambitious novel attempts to imagine the character of Nat Turner; it does not purport to describe accurately or authoritatively the events as they occurred. Some historians consider Gray's account of Turner's "confessions" to be told with prejudice, and recently one writer has alleged that Gray's account is itself a fabrication. Some scholars believe Nat Turner's actions may have been led by mental illness as opposed to religion like Turner made clear in his confessions. Others believed that Turner had his own version of religious beliefs because he was an African American and a slave.