... is no way to weave them into the community fabric; they are ghostlike figures who wander nameless and placeless through the social landscape, a class apart" (162-3). I suggests, however, that blacks in some southern communities were more than intenerate phantom-like laborers. Using Charles Chesnutt's, "The Goophered Grapevine" and "Po Sandy," I submit that Chesnutt's awareness of the link between black people and their plantation homes, not only subverts the structure of genealogical landscape but also reconstructs it. Uncle Julius, in the larger society is in a class apart, merely because of race. Nevertheless, in his plantation community in central North Carolina, he is an insider, an insider with an interest in and an acute knowledge of the land. For instance, all of his "conversations" hinge on his relationship with the past landowners and on the knowledge of the landscape's history. In fact, Julius takes pride in exclaiming, "Mars ...

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