Greenleaf (short story)

"Greenleaf" is a short story by Flannery O'Connor. It was originally published in 1956 in The Kenyon Review and republished in 1965 in O'Connor's posthumous short story collection Everything That Rises Must Converge. The story won O'Connor her first O. Henry Award first prize in 1957 for the year's best American short story. In the story, a snobbish landlady who believes in her family's genetic and cultural superiority struggles to understand why the children of her lower-class tenants have become more successful than her own children. The upwards mobility of her tenants' children reflects the gradual weakening of the Southern social class system.