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

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.