The city of Detroit was a major manufacturing center during most of the 20th century, making it a magnet for many of the African-Americans who moved from the South to northern cities. The narrator refers to the "ghettoes" of Detroit as one of the places (along with those of "New York and Chicago and Los Angeles") to which the Negro tenant farmers and "furnish-hands" who worked in Yoknapatawpha's fields have moved by the 1930s (193).
The "ghettoes" of Los Angeles are one of the places (along with those of "New York and Detroit and Chicago") to which the Negro tenant farmers and "furnish-hands" who worked in Yoknapatawpha's fields have moved by the 1930s (193). Nearby "Hollywood," where Faulkner often worked as a screenwriter during the 1930s and 40s but where he never felt at home, appears in the novel as an adjective in the unseemly phrase "trick Hollywood bathroom" (123).
Boston (along with "Chicago and Kansas City and Philadelphia") is cited as an epitome of municipal political corruption (192). Harvard, the prestigious university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, just next to Boston, is mentioned as one of the places at which the novel's hypothetical non-Southern reader may have been educated: "yourself the stranger, the outlander from B.A. (or perhaps even M.A.) at Harvard or Northwestern or Stanford" (205).
Chicago (along with "Kansas City and Boston and Philadelphia") is cited as an epitome of municipal political corruption (192). The "ghettoes" of Chicago are one of the places (along with those of "New York and Detroit and Los Angeles") to which the Negro tenant farmers and "furnish-hands" who worked in Yoknapatawpha's fields have moved by the 1930s (193).
Pittsburgh is first mentioned (along with Fort Bridger, Wyoming) as proof of how connected the interior of the nation is by its waterways during the 19th century (83), and again as the site of the "factories" that make the sheets of plate glass for the windows of 20th century Jefferson's stores (192).
During the Western Desert Campaign in World War II (1940-1943), Tobruk was held for 241 days by Allied forces - mostly Australian; there were no American troops engaged. There was fighting in many parts of "the African desert" during the War, and Japanese-American troops fighting in Europe accumulated an impressive combat record, but no Japanese-American troops were involved in fighting in Africa (194).
Given how many of the inhabitants of Yoknapatawpha have African ancestors, it is perhaps surprising that Faulkner only mentions "Africa" in six of the fictions. And only "Red Leaves" really acknowledges the connection between Africa and slavery in the U.S. The enslaved protagonist of this story remembers a few parts of his life before he became Issetibbeha's "servant": he was born in "Guinea" (327), a term which includes much of the modern nation of Cameroon, and "taken" into slavery "by a trader off Kamerun" (327-28).
Lake Louise is a resort area in the Canadian Rockies; Temple mentions it in Requiem for a Nun as one of the places where her family might go after their stay in California (44).
