University of North Carolina Press, 2010 In her recent work Cooking in Other Women’s Kitchens: Domestic Workers in the South, 1865-1960, Rebecca Sharpless provides an intriguing account of the personal and public lives of African American domestic workers from Reconstruction to the beginning of the Civil Rights Movement. She traces how cooking and the other »
“‘On a shelf behind the speaker’s desk, was a marble bust, on the base of which in relief were the words “John C. Calhoun.” Poised on its crown, was an inverted inkstand, whose contents had descended in copious streams over the face . . . Under the name, in pencil, was written this explanatory clause. »
“Crossing the Mississippi River, putting my head out of the window to stare at its broad muddy width—the last boundary of my well-known southern world—I left Tennessee.” In 1946, a year after World War II was over and just before school started, my ten-year-old brother and I (twelve then), and my father and his new »
“‘Son, I don’t care if you have to sell peanuts on the street, you work for yourself. Don’t make another man rich.’” As anyone who has studied the history of the South knows, racial hostility was ubiquitous across the Mississippi Delta throughout the hundred years following the Civil War. But contrary to the dominant narrative, »
“‘And where do I fit here? For the Floridian, all Hispanics, all who speak Spanish, are a mix of black and white and of no use . . . It’s a very, very delicate position.’” The Latinization of the U.S. South has inspired a body of literature examining economic, political, social, and cultural changes in »
“Our definitive experiences come not from the identity of a monolithic region but, rather, from the details overlooked in our too-frequent generalizations about the capital-S South.” In late July, I pulled on well-worn leather gloves and dove into the looming task of weeding my mother’s beloved roses. My mother sat on the front porch, too »
“The blues is American music with origins within African American culture of the South, but its story has not been limited by the same national or cultural boundaries.” Seasick Steve’s appearance on BBC breakfast television in 2009 to promote his aptly titled album, Man From Another Time, was an uncanny reminder of the post-war blues »
“The production and sale of illicit music, like liquor, has been part of what the late historian Jack Temple Kirby dubbed the ‘countercultural South’—an undercurrent of defiance to both the government and big business that persisted throughout the twentieth century.” The hillbilly with his jug of moonshine (marked XXX) is a familiar, if problematic caricature »
“Shops featured Elvis window displays; couples renewed their marriage vows before an Elvis wedding celebrant; and even the statue of Sir Henry Parkes, the town’s namesake, sported Elvis’s seventies-era sunglasses.” For the past twenty years, Australian fans have gathered in Parkes, New South Wales, to celebrate Elvis Presley’s birthday. Since the initial gathering of two »
“. . . until his finger pads started bleeding again, fresh calluses splitting as he played . . .” Plunking the rusty washtub basswas simple, tautening or relaxing its ropeso that a few thumping notesrose or fell at the floor of a bluegrass tune.
“His career was entwined with virtually every great blues, R&B, and soul performer of the twentieth century, including Son House, Muddy Waters, Sam Cooke, B.B. King, and Al Greene; yet, Thomas believed that as a pure entertainer he has no equal.” In his eighty-four years, Rufus Thomas worked with hundreds of colorfully named musicians and »
“What does it mean – about the eagle flying on Friday?” On December 27, 1980, I traveled with blues singer James “Son Ford” Thomas to Houston, Texas, where we appeared together at the annual meeting of the Modern Language Association on an oral and written literature panel that was organized by Michel Fabre. I spoke »