Summer ‘06
Southern Cultures volume 12, number 2: TOBACCO
[Read it online]
Front Porch
by Harry L. Watson
"Tobacco is more than smoke or even chemical addiction. Tobacco is longing, tobacco is desire, tobacco is a dream. That makes it perfect for a southern landscape that has long made dreaming a prerequisite for survival."
Essays
The Duke
by Duncan Murrell
"The Dukes linked sex and the cigarette, which was audacious not only because they were abstemious Methodists but because there’s no earthly reason burning a foul weed in your mouth ought to invoke the pleasures of sex. And yet it does."
A New Cure for Brightleaf Tobacco:
The Origins of the Tobacco Queen during the Great Depression
by Blain Roberts
"'All decked out in tobacco leaves,’ the caption read, ‘she might be aptly termed Miss Venus.'"
Tobacco's Civil War
Images of the Sectional Conflict on Tobacco Package Labels
by Paul D. H. Quigley
"Decades before they used sex to sell cigarettes, they were using sectionalism to sell cigars."
Mason-Dixon Lines
"My Aunt Smokes Another Lucky"
poetry by Michael McFee
". . . and everybody laughs, especially my aunt,
smoke haunting her head like ghosts of family.”
Film Bright Leaves
by Ross McElwee (copyright 2003, distributed by First Run Features)
reviewed by Barbara Hahn
"It's not necessarily that we want tobacco; tobacco wants us."
South Polls
The South, the Nation, and Tobacco
by Larry J. Griffin
"My firmly devout Church of Christ grandmother from the hills of east Mississippi dipped snuff for most of her eighty-five years. She wasn’t proud of her habit—tried to hide it, in fact."
Not Forgotten
The Grand Ole Opry and Big Tobacco
by Louis M. Kyriakoudes
"'Its Grand Ole Opry Time—Another big Prince Albert show with Ernest Tubb'"
Books
Peter S. Carmichael
The Last Generation: Young Virginians in Peace, War, and Reunion
reviewed by Stephen Berry
"The young fight our wars. They have the least to lose, the most to prove, a high tolerance for risk, and a low degree of cynicism. When it comes to killing, we tap our children."
Andrew Burstein
Jefferson's Secrets: Death and Desire at Monticello
reviewed by Kristofer Ray
"Jefferson certainly cared for Hemings, argues Burstein, much as an English nobleman cared for an employee mistress—but they did not (and could not) share a long-term, loving partnership."
Helen C. Rountree
Pocahontas, Powhatan, Opechancanough: Three Indian Lives Changed by Jamestown
reviewed by Michael D. Green
"Rountree debunks the myth of Pocahontas saving Smith’s life as he was about to have his head beat in."
Steve Estes
I Am a Man! Race, Manhood, and the Civil Rights Movement
reviewed by Larry Isaac
"Massacres of entire African American communities were motivated, in large part, by rumors that a black man raped a white woman."
About the Contributors