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Reviews
South to America: A Journey Below the Mason Dixon to Understand the Soul of a Nation by Imani Perry
aliceing's review against another edition
informative
reflective
medium-paced
3.5
This review took a while because I have a lot of conflicting thoughts! The TLDR is: great if you are interested in the conceptual South and looking for a personal history, less great if you are looking for factual history or compact language and writing.
As a white person from the northern South with a very long Appalachian heritage, this was a very important book to read. I went into it hoping for history flavored with reflection and that's definitely what I got - along with a lot of personal stories (generally good), generalizations (hard to evaluate), and dualities. Personal histories like this are a little hard to evaluate because they are somewhere between biography, memoir, and pop history - all polarizing genres. I was surprised that Perry opened with the northern south, although I appreciate the inclusion of DC and Maryland because they are often forgotten. The evaluation of the northern South, including Virginia and West VA, felt extremely cursory, especially given the immediacy of the Civil War and the long legacy of Appalachian whiteness/class relative to Applachian Blackness/class, plus the rampant environmental justice issues - she gets there in Louisiana, but not West VA!
I think the core issue is twofold: 1) this is an incredibly ambitious book, perhaps too ambitious, and 2) I listened to the audiobook. The writing is very nice but VERY verbose and could definitely have been tightened up in spots - this is very obvious in the audio version and grating after a while. Distillation only makes a thing stronger when the core is already there, as it clearly is here. The length combined with the writing and the awkward organization made for challenging listening, although I appreciate that Perry read it herself.
Some other less good aspects:
As a white person from the northern South with a very long Appalachian heritage, this was a very important book to read. I went into it hoping for history flavored with reflection and that's definitely what I got - along with a lot of personal stories (generally good), generalizations (hard to evaluate), and dualities. Personal histories like this are a little hard to evaluate because they are somewhere between biography, memoir, and pop history - all polarizing genres. I was surprised that Perry opened with the northern south, although I appreciate the inclusion of DC and Maryland because they are often forgotten. The evaluation of the northern South, including Virginia and West VA, felt extremely cursory, especially given the immediacy of the Civil War and the long legacy of Appalachian whiteness/class relative to Applachian Blackness/class, plus the rampant environmental justice issues - she gets there in Louisiana, but not West VA!
I think the core issue is twofold: 1) this is an incredibly ambitious book, perhaps too ambitious, and 2) I listened to the audiobook. The writing is very nice but VERY verbose and could definitely have been tightened up in spots - this is very obvious in the audio version and grating after a while. Distillation only makes a thing stronger when the core is already there, as it clearly is here. The length combined with the writing and the awkward organization made for challenging listening, although I appreciate that Perry read it herself.
Some other less good aspects:
- Several other reviews discuss the organization which is really haphazard. There are a lot of short stories in each section that feel somewhat random when listened to - there may be formatting that distinguishes it in the print book, I'm not sure.
- There is a lot of projection onto minor interactions, which is a real weak point in the book - those are perfectly valid stories and we all live within the structures of our society, but we really cannot claim to know deep inner thoughts or experiences of random airport workers or Uber drivers.
- The blitz through Cuba and Bermuda, while interesting, felt very rushed compared to the sections about the Deep South, and more than one reviewer has noticed factual inaccuracies there. There's a lot of merit to exploring beyond the geographic borders of the South, but I think existing as a tourist alters your perception of a place to such a degree that these sections didn't hold water for me.
This review feels more negative but I'm glad I read it and there is a lot of wonderful, useful reflection here. Ultimately, this is a beautiful and thought provoking personal exploration of an individual's history, emphasis on the personal.
heather3879's review against another edition
emotional
hopeful
informative
reflective
medium-paced
5.0
rosa_inverno's review
4.25
I think how you feel about this book depends on what you come into it expecting. I didn't have a lot of specific expectations so finding a meditation/memoir/travelogue combo was something I found fascinating. I was also very drawn in by the somewhat stream of consciousnes writing style that, to me, showed the interconnected nature of theme and place.
Sometimes I felt the narrative needed a little space to breath - a lot of complex ideas were being presented at once. But generally this was incredible.
Sometimes I felt the narrative needed a little space to breath - a lot of complex ideas were being presented at once. But generally this was incredible.
rainbowbookworm's review against another edition
3.0
Until I reached the section about Cuba, I was enjoying this book and thinking I was learning a lot about history and culture from it. Then I read something that was factually inaccurate and it made me question the veracity of the other things I read. Nevertheless, it was a well-written, entertaining book which is why I still gave it a three-star rating.
hollydyer328's review against another edition
challenging
informative
reflective
slow-paced
3.5
This took me a while to get into, but once I got the hang of the general structure, I started enjoying it. There's definitely a lot about the South that I didn't know, especially for places we wouldn't consider the south like Washington, D.C. This was a well-researched and well-written exploration of the history of the South and what it tells about racism in the U.S. The scope was very large and there were a lot of details that I didn't get. I also listened on audio and this book is probably better in print.
ladyleigh's review against another edition
Didn’t like the writing style/voice/tone
madeleinegeorge's review against another edition
5.0
What a brilliant, moving catalogue of wonder. Perry is exacting, thorough, and generous in her roaming, expansive survey the South. More complete, resplendently detailed, grief-ridden, and anthropologically inspired than any other geographic or cultural autopsy I've read, especially of this-- our home-- whose legacy is more historically rich, culturally complicated, and politically important than perhaps any other. The sensorium of Perry's prose never fails to amaze and affect in turn; the writing sings with the song of live oak, of red clay, of summer heat and hushpuppies. The words are as southern as their writer, who is as southern as her soil. An enriching, demanding, if sometimes exhausting, text-- and and essential summer read for anyone below the Mason Dixon or anyone who loves its music, its food, its writers, or any of its children.
daschneider's review against another edition
challenging
dark
informative
reflective
medium-paced
4.0
hulahoopes's review against another edition
challenging
emotional
informative
reflective
slow-paced
4.5