Whiteleaf is the small hamlet, probably smaller than Frenchman's Bend, where Grover Cleveland Winbush's mother lives. Our guess about its location is based both on the other texts in which "Whiteleaf" appears, and on the likelihood that Faulkner's imagination derived the place from the Yellow Leaf Creek that flows in Lafayette County.
Jay Watson, a founding advisory editor for DY, is Distinguished Professor of English and Howry Professor of Faulkner Studies at the University of Mississippi, where he has taught since 1989. Author or editor of fifteen books, most recently Fossil Fuel Faulkner: Energy, Modernity and the US South (Oxford, 2022), he was president of the William Faulkner Society from 2009 to 2012.
