The Wind Done Gone

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**Title** **The Wind Done Gone**

Author	Alice Randall
Country	United States
Language	English
Genre(s)	Parody
Publisher	Houghton Mifflin
Released	June, 2001 (hardcover)
Media type	Print (paperback and hardcover)
ISBN	ISBN 0-618-10450-X; ISBN 0-618-21906-4

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

1 Plot summary
2 Legal controversy
3 References
4 External links

[edit] Plot summary

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. Cynara's name comes from the Ernest Dowson poem Non sum qualís eram bonae sub regno Cynarae ("I have forgot much, Cynara! gone with the wind") where the title of the original novel comes from.

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 the O'Haras' house, Tara, is reduced to "Tata" or "Cotton Farm", and Twelve Oaks is renamed for its builders, "Twelve Slaves Strong as Trees".

[edit] Legal controversy

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.

The cover of the book bears a seal identifying it as "The Unauthorized Parody." It is parody in the broad legal sense: a work that comments or criticizes a prior work. This characterization was important in the Suntrust case. However, the book is not a comedy, as the term "parody" would imply in its common usage.