“Key to the emerging styles of the American South and West Africa alike are traditions of eloquence that extend to the foundations of Black Atlantic culture.” With a heavy diamond stud anchoring each earlobe, hip-hop hustler Akon disembarks from his helicopter, spreads his arms to the sky, and sings about his solvency from the bow »
“Native Hawaiian guitarists, who slid metal bars over their strings to create sweeping glissando sounds, inundated the South in the first decades of the twentieth century.” Although the work of eliminating blues myths is a hard row to hoe, scholars have successfully uprooted a few, including the persistent belief that into the early twentieth century, »
“The questions we ask of our music suggest parallels for our own reflections: where did it come from, how can it both ‘be’ and ‘become’ southern, and how much of its nature is created through the act of performance?” For more than a century, non-southerners have headed South on a series of musical quests and »
“There, every Wednesday, my Daddy presided over what those assembled called ‘prayer meeting,’ because that was what it wasn’t.” All across the South, Wednesday night is when the faithful gather for “prayer meeting,” that midweek pause to remind the Lord that the faithful are still faithful. However, there was a time not so very long »
“Some people were just nuts about them. And they also have a mystique around extraterrestrial stuff.” The Moon Pie is an icon in the American South, where both its image and its taste evoke memories of country stores and their agrarian worlds. If we Google Moon Pies, 3,060,000 (currently the number is 40,500,000) references appear »
“There are miracles in this world but they are working-class, Wednesday morning miracles . . .” There are miracles in this worldbut they are working-class, Wednesday morning miraclesthat go mostly unnoticed by the priests.
“Enter our story’s main character. His response to agribusiness is what makes this story unique.” This is a story of people coping with change. It reveals a dramatic shift in agricultural policy beginning around the middle of the twentieth century, which was first fueled by—and later propped up with—America’s military-industrial complex. The shift was from »
“Simmons, Aycock, and Daniels used their influence, oratorial skills, and the press to create a rape scare, demonize and humiliate black men and women, spread a violent white supremacist ideology, and reclaim the North Carolina Legislature for the Democratic Party.” In the 1890s, the economic fortunes of farmers were dashed when the cotton market collapsed. »
“Another attraction was what their Flo Field remembered years later as a ‘death-defying platform’ built over the roof. Reached through a window, it offered an escape from the stifling heat of a New Orleans attic, and at one party Faulkner unsuccessfully tried to persuade Field to crawl outside—four floors above the street—with him.” In October »
Memoir
Dr. Julius Hibbert: “Yes, I remember Bart’s birth well. You don’t forget a thing like . . . SIAMESE TWINS!”Lisa Simpson: “I believe they prefer to be called ‘conjoined twins.’”Dr. Hibbert: “And hillbillies prefer to be called ‘Sons of the Soil,’ but it ain’t gonna happen!”—The Simpsons, season 8, “Treehouse of Horror” In an interview »
“Though the Hard South cannot be evaded, most southerners know there is more to the region than that. The Soft South is here as well, cheek by jowl with its evil twin. Can we have one without the other?” As W. J. Cash reminded us long ago, there are many Souths. He listed the familiar »
Poetry
Now that the salt of their blood Stiffens the saltier oblivion of the sea . . . —Allen Tate We leave Gulfport at noon; gulls overheadtrailing the boat—streamers, noisy fanfare—all the way to Ship Island. What we seefirst is the fort, its roof of grass, a lee—half reminder of the men who served there—a weathered »