Reviews with content warning for Racism - South to America: A Journey Below the Mason-Dixon to Understand the Soul of a Nation

Reviews tagging 'Racism'

South to America: A Journey Below the Mason-Dixon to Understand the Soul of a Nation by Imani Perry

17 reviews

just_one_more_paige's review against another edition

informative reflective slow-paced

4.0

When South to America won the National Book Award for nonfiction in 2022, I added it to my TBR right away. I have lived in the south for years now (like over 2 decades?! yikes!) and I was very interested to see what Perry discovered and had to say. I found How the Word is Passed fascinating, which I felt like had a similar vibe, as far as traveling to places to write about them and see the people/vibes for oneself (and very south-focused, as well). And The Sum of Us is one of the best pieces of nonfiction and has a similar research/narrative style (and I actually even noted other similarities to Sum, in the messages of the books, as well).

With sweeping nonfiction like this, I am not always sure how to put in a "blurb" about the book. So, I'm going to save myself effort and borrow from Goodreads for this one: "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 We all think we know the South. Even those who have never lived there can rattle off a list of signifiers: the Civil War, Gone with the Wind, the Ku Klux Klan, plantations, football, Jim Crow, slavery. But the idiosyncrasies, dispositions, and habits of the region are stranger and more complex than much of the country tends to acknowledge. In South to America, Imani Perry shows that the meaning of American is inextricably linked with the South, and that our understanding of its history and culture is the key to understanding the nation as a whole. 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."

This was an ambitious work. To spend time and try to represent, with depth and nuance, every state/area considered part of the "South" region of the US (including some of the islands off the coast that are perhaps not technically part of the US, but culturally and contextually, have and deserve a place in this conversation), is so much to take on. The nuance of all the interwoven histories, cultures and traditions, peoples, and how they - individually and in combination - created, over time, what we know as the South today is, to repeat myself, just so much. I feel like it could have, maybe should have, been overwhelming, and yet Perry story-tells it in a way that is accessible and compelling from start to finish. I could spend pages trying to communicate what she managed, but the only way to really "get" it would be to read to yourself. Attempting to recreate it in any way would be a disservice to her effort and product. But, I will list a few favorite things, some biggest impressions, and a few foremost thoughts.

- I loved the blending of all the parts (events and peoples) of US history (and interwoven with international history) in the South that we like to make a linear story but is, in fact, anything but. Seeing Perry show the many ways that the “back then” is part of the “now,” the connections she draws across/among time and space (history and location/geography and persons/characters), exemplifying how the past is all around us, we haven’t moved past its affects or reality, is phenomenal and insightful.

- Here's to Perry calling out the way the south has taken the brunt of the bad press related to racism and poverty in the US, in an effort to pretend it doesn't exist elsewhere (which is a blatant misdirection and lie). I mean, I'm not saying the South doesn't deserve that reputation it's got, but it sure isn't the only part of this country that deserves it, and interrogating the South as the repository for all the country’s shame, which flattens its nuance AND allows the rest of the country off the hook much too easily (and disingenuously), is important.

- I thought the exploration of the South (and the related issues of race and class) in the contexts of myriad popular pastimes and cultural areas - horse racing, alcohol both legal and otherwise, profession (like mining), religion, architecture/home/home ownership, and more - was fascinating. Some I've been aware of due to my own family/history and the state I live in that glorifies it (NC bootlegging, for example), but other pieces of this were really new in the way they were tied in and I was very interested in those connections.

- Research (historical and present-day journalistic) and spirituality mingle together in these pages with a gorgeous lyricism. The writing throughout is thoughtful and meditative, smoothly tying together seemingly disparate anecdotes, quotes/cultural references, historical moments, and personal stories. It feels like Perry is really engaging the reader in a conversation, the same way she herself engaged in conversations as she traveled around researching for this book.

- There is a profound exploration of the intersections of race and class in southern America that, where they could unite, have been used to divide. While this is, obviously, a focus on Black and White as central to this narrative, Perry also addresses other identities that make up and played a role in the formation of the South as it is today (specifically she brings in Asian and queer and Jewish and Indigenous populations, as well as a bit about different political sentiments, belief systems and *some* disability). Through this, she calls out and recognizes the layers of the South that are often flattened, generationally and geographically, by outsiders and sometimes even by "insiders" (like the clashes of urban and rural, affluent and poverty, southern versus country, among others).

- The examination of the ties and parallels of the global south and the American south - the many intersections therein - was fascinating and incredibly educational.

- At one point, Perry uses the phrase “theater of creation” to describe all the false hierarchies and separations that have been deviously and purposefully imposed on humanity. And it was one of the most affecting phrases/descriptions I've ever read. It's really sticking with me - I keep coming back to it, considering its many meanings and angles and lessons.

South to America is an incredible work of nonfiction. Sweeping in its view and consideration of the South, inclusive of its many personalities. And so personable in its writing. Perry illustrates the many ways the south is roiling beneath the surface with such clarity and deftness and delves beneath the facade(s) of the South to find the truth that is held there, waiting to teach us all.

“Affrilachians have a broad Southern experience but also a rare one, with a color line, a fragile Jim Crow, a problem with cruel racism and poverty, and the kind of intimacy that comes when you live in small places even if they are unequal.”

“all identity is, in part, myth”

“There is nothing new about ugliness in a very dressed up place.” (on the “moral majority” defunding against threats to their stance with violence and in conjunction with the contradictions in the Christianity/religion of the settlers that has been so deeply adopted in the south)

“We are used to making virtue out of shameful ways, and justifying brutality for the sake of virtue.” (regarding the Klan)

“The truth is, all the learning in the world won’t create a new set of race relations if so much remains out of the grasp of those on the disfavored side of the color line. […] There are no historic firsts, no grand gestures, no monuments or museums that undo generations of exclusions under law, policy, and practice, or that stop the expulsion.”

“Some monuments have been hiding in plain sight. Some monuments are not human likenesses but the persistence of creation. Some monuments are destructive or ambiguous. Some are an aspiration as well as recognition.”

“…being American is being a trickster.”

“What makes a secret a secret? It isn’t really who knows – somebody always knows, usually a bunch of people outside of the secret holder. What makes it a secret is that it cannot be spoken about above a whisper without something breaking. […] And as long as they’re hidden, we are prohibited from creating more loving ways of being with one another; we aren’t allowed that joy on the other side of secrecy. We cannot correct the imbalance and violence that happens in the shadows with shame lashing out all over the one who is supposed to be beloved unless and until we decide the truth can be spoken.”

“A good time doesn’t require abandonment of the hard time that settles inside your chest.”

“It is not enough to set aside a little time or attention here or there to grieve our national sins, then, soft as butter, turn back to proclamations of greatness. Because history is an instruction. And what you neglect to attend to from the past, you will surely ignore in the present.” (And look around us, because it’s happening!)

“We haven’t outrun or outlived the plantation, although it looks a little bit different. […] The triumph is not in ends; it is in the fact that we are still here.” (SEE ALSO: “different people, same choreography of suffering” and “don’t be blinded to what remains the same, even as things change”)

“This is what it means to be Black American: the hidden virtue of an unsure genealogy is a vast archive of ways being learned from birth.”

“There isn’t any safe place when the instruments of war are always within reach.” (speaking to: gun ownership in America)

“Everything is subject to markets. Folkways have little power without capital. But there is a particularly sharp way gentrification cuts in the South, a region built by the people who were property. People who in freedom saw their perceived value plummet. It is worse than irony. It is devastation.”

“It is strange how intense borders are when it comes to bodies, given how freely money moves today. Money respects no edges of land, even as land is deputized to sort out who belongs and who doesn’t.”

“A nation is an imagined community. The shared narrative and common mythos of countrypeople produce fellow feeling and common identities. In the United States, our heterogeneity, our size, our federalism, and our ever-present conflicts have always splintered some of these myths. We intuitively know the claims to singularity are platitudes.”

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maregred's review against another edition

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challenging hopeful informative reflective slow-paced

4.0

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amsswim's review against another edition

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dark emotional informative reflective sad medium-paced

5.0

Loved this read. Similar premise to How the Word is Passed by Clint Smith in the sense of travelling to important places in the history of black people in America, however this book does not limit itself to pre-Civil War history. Truly dives into how the United States was built on slavery and inequality from the very start, and we as a nation keep the old ideas and habits around. I listened to the audiobook, which was read by the author. Highly recommend this one, and it came out this year.

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fkshg8465's review

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adventurous challenging dark emotional informative reflective sad fast-paced

5.0

This is a book of some of US history’s most salient figures, events, and tipping points of the southern states. It’s the kind of history all US schools should teach but is being banned in too many of the same southern states. You might call it US Black history, but US Black history is US history, just as my US Asian history and the US White history we are often only taught. I’ll be reading this book many times over.

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