Vol. 10, No. 1: Spring 2004

Vol. 10, No. 1: Spring 2004

Acclaimed author Alice Walker tells why she loves B.B. King, why the Reverend Martin Luther King should be alive today, and why the earth is her guiding grace. Then award-winning writers Lee Smith and Hal Crowther journey into the apocalyptic mind of Reverend McKendree Robbins Long; a former fireworks runner tells all; and Uncle Dave Macon declares war on cars.

Front Porch: Spring 2004

by Harry L. Watson

"Maybe firecrackers don't mean anything but a hell of a good time."

Alice Walker: “I know what the earth says”

by William R. Ferris

"I love B. B. because he loves women. They can be mean, they can be bitchy, they can be carrying on, but you can tell he really loves them. He's full of love. I would like to be the literary B.B. King."

Fireworking Down South

by Brooks Blevins

"'I need a monkey driving a car, one hen laying eggs, two cuckoos, a fairy with a flower, one climbing panda, one cock crowing at dawn, and whatever we've got in the way of a Jupiter's fire or a thunder blast or a big bear.'"

“All Wrought Up”: The Apocalyptic South of McKendree Robbins Long

by Hal Crowther, Lee Smith

"We often had dates for the revival, since there wasn't anything else to do in that town, or anyplace else to go, and that oftentimes your date would be holding your hand while you both got all wrought up together. So there was a sexual thing going on there, too."

Saturday Night and Sunday Morning

by Lee Smith

"My mother used to call it GETTING ALL WROUGHT UP and viewed it as a kind of sickness, like the flu."

Float Fishing in the Ring of Fire

by Hal Crowther

"I'm with the British writer Zadie Smith, who writes, 'The Book of Revelation is the last stop on the nutso express.'"

Grandfather Long the Last Time

by Robert Hill Long

"I am myself a history / Flanked always by A.D., B.C."

The Grand Ole Opry and the Urban South

by Louis M. Kyriakoudes

"'Lord, Lord, you ought to take a ride, get in a Ford with a donnie by your side.'"

Mill Village and The Stretch-Out

by Ron Rash

"I was only seventeen, a girl / who still could trust a suit and smile."

A Southern Memory

by Robert Flournoy

"'Yessir, pretty fine shootin', especially as it appears these birds were flying upside down.'"

Separate, But Equal: The Mississippi Photographs of Henry Clay Anderson by Henry Clay Anderson (Review)

by J. Todd Moye

Public Affairs, 2002

Ignatius Rising: The Life of John Kennedy Toole by René Pol Nevils (Review)

by Bryan Albin Giemza

Louisiana State University Press, 2001

Dixie’s Daughters: The United Daughters of the Confederacy and the Preservation of Confederate Culture by Karen L. Cox (Review)

by Gaines M. Foster

University Press of Florida, 2003

Close Harmony: A History of Southern Gospel by James R. Goff (Review)

by James Parris

University of North Carolina Press, 2002

The Rise of Southern Republicans by Earl Black and Merle Black, and: The Politics of Cultural Differences: Social Change and Voter Mobilization Strategies in the Post-New Deal Period ed. by David C. Leege, Kenneth D. Wald, Brian S. Krueger, and Paul D. Mueller (Review)

by John Quinterno

Belknap Press, 2002; Princeton University Press, 2002