In the middle of the Trump administration, I quit my job as books editor at the LA Times and moved to the south. The deep south: Alabama. I was inspired by the Legacy Monument and Museum by Bryan Stevenson’s Equal Justice Initiative. I was also inspired by all the creative people doing great work across the South, and by progressive people working in the face of overwhelming odds. I wanted to be a blue person in a red state; a small simple thing, really.
To just about everyone I seemed like some random northerner, but I’m a native of the South. Although we moved away when I was three, we wound up in Charlottesville for a year when I was in middle school. My mother was from Virginia, but she liked to call it DC, I think as a way of exempting it from the South and the ignorance and bias that signified. Now I have her high school ring, which has Robert E. Lee’s name on it, so I know that she was surrounded by the myths of the Confederacy.
Perhaps because of my personal ties, I’ve always considered the South an essential part of America and how we function (or not). Having lived in the northeast and on the west coast for most of my life, I think a lot of people would prefer to not thing about the south and its troubles much, just like my mother. The racism and violence the South is known for is something that is easier to imagine as other, separate, apart. Of course it’s not. I’m still learning the extent to which the South made and shapes out nation.
South to America
That’s why I was delighted to talk to Imani Perry about her book South to America: A Journey Below the Mason-Dixon Line to Understand the Soul of a Nation for the LA Times. The book is phenomenal in its depth and breadth, combining history and personal anecdote, music and economics and much more. I was really glad that the paper let me talk to Perry about a book about a region, or set of problems, that could be dismissed as far away.
Here’s one thing she told me that didn’t fit into my piece:
Human interaction is so complex. There's this incredible intimacy across lines of difference in the South — incredible intimacy, even though there's such profound brutality, and a color line. And that's not just true of the South, but that helps us understand something about what this project that the United States of America is. Right? “American” means something, even though there's an intense set of divisions and inequalities that are part of its story. The South becomes an encapsulated version of the core of the complication of what we are.
This idea echoes throughout her book in so many different modes and variations. I hope you’ll read it.
I also hope you’ll read Maud Newton’s book, “Ancestor Trouble: A Reckoning and a Reconciliation,” out next month. Maud, who lives in New York now, was born and raised in Florida by two very different parents who divorced when she was young. Her mother was generally progressive and iconoclastically religious; her father was a racist. Maud, who made her name as a litblogger (the name borrowed from a relative, something she explores in the book), started the book with an essay in Harper’s which explored genealogy and some of her colorful family history, like the grandfather who married many times over. But this book is much deeper, looking at what it means to be a white southerner descended from racist white southerners, some of whom enslaved people. Is it enough to just not be an asshole? Maud thinks we can do more.
I talked to Maud for Salvation South, the new magazine from Bitter Southerner founder Chuck Reece. I really hope that his readers consider taking a look at Maud’s book.
Here’s something Maud told me that did make it into the piece but I think is worth reiterating:
There were definitely a lot of times when I was young when I would talk about my family's history of enslaving people, and people, especially white people, would act like it was weird that I was thinking about that. Over the years that I worked on it, this subtext of white supremacy in our culture that a lot of us were trained not to see really came out, and there's no denying it now.
I moved away from Alabama in late 2020, when the pandemic was raging, vaccines weren’t available and I couldn’t bear living in an anti-science place anymore. There are so many lovely people in the south, and so much potential, but despite my best efforts I never felt like I genuinely made my place there.
On the other hand, both Imani Perry and Maud Newton are deeply connected to it. Their stories are so vital. Check out their books!
Two tales of the South
I’m loving South to America and excited to read your interview! And thank you again so much for interviewing me—and now for mentioning Ancestor Trouble here.