South to America: A Journey Below the Mason-Dixon to Understand the Soul of a Nation
An essential, surprising journey through the history, rituals, and landscapes of the American South—and a revelatory argument for why you must understand the South in order to understand America
Weaving together stories of immigrant communities, contemporary artists, exploitative opportunists, enslaved peoples, unsung heroes, her own ancestors, and her lived experiences, Imani Perry crafts a tapestry unlike any other. With uncommon insight and breathtaking clarity, South to America offers an assertion that if we want to build a more humane future for the United States, we must center our concern below the Mason-Dixon Line.
Weaving together stories of immigrant communities, contemporary artists, exploitative opportunists, enslaved peoples, unsung heroes, her own ancestors, and her lived experiences, Imani Perry crafts a tapestry unlike any other. With uncommon insight and breathtaking clarity, South to America offers an assertion that if we want to build a more humane future for the United States, we must center our concern below the Mason-Dixon Line.
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Community Reviews
I’ve been struggling to figure out why I disliked this book as much as I did. There’s a lot of history, which I’m inclined to enjoy. And I am not opposed to the central argument—that the culture & history of the South is critical to America’s national identity. So why didn’t I love this book?
I have small complaints, of course, as I do with any book. The constant name dropping was an early irritant. And one step further, the borrowing of individuals’ personal histories, with only weak & poorly considered connections to any larger history.
But more fundamentally, the book is really disjointed. I actually started to enjoy it a bit more when I began thinking of it as a series of separate essays (articles in The Atlantic, perhaps) tangential to a common theme, rather than as a unitary book.
Deeper than that, though, what I could never get past was the author’s own approach to the South, which read as very detached, even as she seemed to be trying to claim the (entire) South as her own. It seems critical to her definition of «The South» that it is never (so perhaps cannot be?) properly understood by outsiders. It’s a bit ironic that she wants to hold that viewpoint in concert with the idea that all other Americans need to recognize how important «The South» is to them. Worse, though, this viewpoint has her occasionally—sporadically, really, without any warning or apparent cause—detaching from the narrative and writing like a sociologist on holiday. Where she lost me was when she stepped inside a Dollar Store and described it as though her reader could not possibly have ever set foot in one. More to the point, as though she herself were making some major sacrifice For the Good of All Journalism, so that none of us would ever have to set foot in one.
Truthfully, though I suppose I did learn a thing or two along the way, I’m not sure this book was worth the time I gave to it. I don’t think I would do it again.
I have small complaints, of course, as I do with any book. The constant name dropping was an early irritant. And one step further, the borrowing of individuals’ personal histories, with only weak & poorly considered connections to any larger history.
But more fundamentally, the book is really disjointed. I actually started to enjoy it a bit more when I began thinking of it as a series of separate essays (articles in The Atlantic, perhaps) tangential to a common theme, rather than as a unitary book.
Deeper than that, though, what I could never get past was the author’s own approach to the South, which read as very detached, even as she seemed to be trying to claim the (entire) South as her own. It seems critical to her definition of «The South» that it is never (so perhaps cannot be?) properly understood by outsiders. It’s a bit ironic that she wants to hold that viewpoint in concert with the idea that all other Americans need to recognize how important «The South» is to them. Worse, though, this viewpoint has her occasionally—sporadically, really, without any warning or apparent cause—detaching from the narrative and writing like a sociologist on holiday. Where she lost me was when she stepped inside a Dollar Store and described it as though her reader could not possibly have ever set foot in one. More to the point, as though she herself were making some major sacrifice For the Good of All Journalism, so that none of us would ever have to set foot in one.
Truthfully, though I suppose I did learn a thing or two along the way, I’m not sure this book was worth the time I gave to it. I don’t think I would do it again.
South to America is excellent in every way. Imani Perry’s brilliant use of lyrical language paints vivid vistas in your mind of the South that are both beautiful and gut wrenching. Most importantly she reminds us that the very definition of what constitutes the South is limited compared to how global and reaching it is on the United States mainland. That said she goes about covering every side of the conversation about race in America with grace and academic integrity. While also demonstrating again and again the revisionist history that is the foundation of the idea of American Exceptionalism.
The history we are taught is at best murky and Perry challenges the bigoted portrayal of Black people in America. Along the way she shows how moral inconsistencies abound. Even in the hardest moments to swallow Perry demonstrates how blood, migratory patterns, and economic engines bind, or more aptly make indebted, the North to the South. Even yet, the South, and Black America, goes unthanked for its deep and lasting cultural impacts on the broader American culture.
Beyond the history we get candid personal anecdotes and interviews that show how the the macro civil rights movement impacts individual outcomes. The personal touch makes this book read at times like a love story to Black America and at others a warning. The praise highlighting the ways in which Black culture is distinct and has shaped the broader American culture. The warning is a reminder of the traps, imposed and self-inflicted, that hold us back. This book should find a home comfortably in between Heather McGee’s “The Sum of Us” and Isabelle Wilkerson’s “Caste” on most book shelves.
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