Realizing Our Place: Real Southern Women in a Mythologized Land
What does it mean to be from somewhere? Does place seep into one's very being like roots making their way through rich soil, shaping a sense of self? In particular, what does it mean to be from a place with a storied past, one mythologized as the very best and worst of our nation? Such questions inspired Catherine Egley Waggoner and Laura Egley Taylor, sisters and Delta expatriates themselves, to embark on a trail of conversations through the Mississippi Delta.

Meeting in evocative settings from kitchens and beauty parlors to screened-in porches with fifty-one women--black, Chinese, Lebanese, and white; elderly and young; rich and poor; bisexual and straight--the authors trace the extent to which the historical dimensions of southern womanhood like submissiveness, purity, piety, and domesticity are visible in contemporary Delta women's everyday enactments. Waggoner and Taylor argue that these women do not simply embrace or reject such dimensions, but instead creatively tweak stereotypes in such a way that skillfully legitimizes their authenticity.

Blending academic analysis with colorful excerpts of Delta women's words and including over one hundred striking photographs, Waggoner and Taylor provide an insightful peek into the lives of real southern women living in a deeply mythologized land.
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Realizing Our Place: Real Southern Women in a Mythologized Land
What does it mean to be from somewhere? Does place seep into one's very being like roots making their way through rich soil, shaping a sense of self? In particular, what does it mean to be from a place with a storied past, one mythologized as the very best and worst of our nation? Such questions inspired Catherine Egley Waggoner and Laura Egley Taylor, sisters and Delta expatriates themselves, to embark on a trail of conversations through the Mississippi Delta.

Meeting in evocative settings from kitchens and beauty parlors to screened-in porches with fifty-one women--black, Chinese, Lebanese, and white; elderly and young; rich and poor; bisexual and straight--the authors trace the extent to which the historical dimensions of southern womanhood like submissiveness, purity, piety, and domesticity are visible in contemporary Delta women's everyday enactments. Waggoner and Taylor argue that these women do not simply embrace or reject such dimensions, but instead creatively tweak stereotypes in such a way that skillfully legitimizes their authenticity.

Blending academic analysis with colorful excerpts of Delta women's words and including over one hundred striking photographs, Waggoner and Taylor provide an insightful peek into the lives of real southern women living in a deeply mythologized land.
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Realizing Our Place: Real Southern Women in a Mythologized Land

Realizing Our Place: Real Southern Women in a Mythologized Land

Realizing Our Place: Real Southern Women in a Mythologized Land

Realizing Our Place: Real Southern Women in a Mythologized Land

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Overview

What does it mean to be from somewhere? Does place seep into one's very being like roots making their way through rich soil, shaping a sense of self? In particular, what does it mean to be from a place with a storied past, one mythologized as the very best and worst of our nation? Such questions inspired Catherine Egley Waggoner and Laura Egley Taylor, sisters and Delta expatriates themselves, to embark on a trail of conversations through the Mississippi Delta.

Meeting in evocative settings from kitchens and beauty parlors to screened-in porches with fifty-one women--black, Chinese, Lebanese, and white; elderly and young; rich and poor; bisexual and straight--the authors trace the extent to which the historical dimensions of southern womanhood like submissiveness, purity, piety, and domesticity are visible in contemporary Delta women's everyday enactments. Waggoner and Taylor argue that these women do not simply embrace or reject such dimensions, but instead creatively tweak stereotypes in such a way that skillfully legitimizes their authenticity.

Blending academic analysis with colorful excerpts of Delta women's words and including over one hundred striking photographs, Waggoner and Taylor provide an insightful peek into the lives of real southern women living in a deeply mythologized land.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781496817594
Publisher: University Press of Mississippi
Publication date: 07/12/2018
Sold by: Barnes & Noble
Format: eBook
Pages: 208
File size: 15 MB
Note: This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

Catherine Egley Waggoner is professor of communication at Wittenberg University. She is coauthor of Making Camp: Rhetorics of Transgression in U.S. Popular Culture and recipient of Wittenberg's 2014 Alumni Association Award for Distinguished Teaching. Laura Egley Taylor is the Miller Omega Design Coordinator at the Santa Fe Institute, where she runs SFI Press and works to visually interpret complexity science to the general public. She was art director of the award-winning natural parenting magazine Mothering until 2011.
Laura Egley Taylor is the Miller Omega Design Coordinator at the Santa Fe Institute, where she runs SFI Press and works to visually interpret complexity science to the general public. She was art director of the award-winning natural parenting magazine Mothering until 2011.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments viii

Prologue xiii

Chapter 1 Set in Place 5

Chapter 2 Knowing One's Place: Culture and Identity 17

Chapter 3 Strength with a Veneer of Grace: Performances of Deference 41

Chapter 4 Pitting to the Place: Performances of Propriety 67

Chapter 5 "Bless Her Heart": Performances of Religiosity 90

Chapter 6 Claiming Place: Performances of Domesticity 129

Chapter 7 Conclusions: Grounded Grace 163

Epilogue 185

The Women 191

Notes 199

References 212

Index 220

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