South to America: A Journey Below the Mason-Dixon to Understand the Soul of a Nation (National Book Award Winner)

South to America: A Journey Below the Mason-Dixon to Understand the Soul of a Nation (National Book Award Winner)

by Imani Perry
South to America: A Journey Below the Mason-Dixon to Understand the Soul of a Nation (National Book Award Winner)

South to America: A Journey Below the Mason-Dixon to Understand the Soul of a Nation (National Book Award Winner)

by Imani Perry

Hardcover

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Overview

Notes From Your Bookseller

Imani Perry’s mesmerizing blending of history, travelogue, creative storytelling, and memoir is an exquisitely beautiful expression of a deeply felt, yet conflicted love for a part of America that is in many ways her home. Lithe and nuanced, yet a laser sharp lesson in the complex and shifting landscapes of American racial and political identities. 

WINNER OF THE 2022 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FOR NONFICTION

INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

“An elegant meditation on the complexities of the American South—and thus of America—by an esteemed daughter of the South and one of the great intellectuals of our time. An inspiration.” —Isabel Wilkerson

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.

This is the story of a Black woman and native Alabaman returning to the region she has always called home and considering it with fresh eyes. Her journey is full of detours, deep dives, and surprising encounters with places and people. She renders Southerners from all walks of life with sensitivity and honesty, sharing her thoughts about a troubling history and the ritual humiliations and joys that characterize so much of Southern life.

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.  

A Recommended Read from: The New Yorker • The New York Times • TIME • Oprah Daily • USA Today • Vulture • Essence • Esquire • W Magazine • Atlanta Journal-Constitution • PopSugar • Book Riot • Chicago Review of Books • Electric Literature • Lit Hub 


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780062977403
Publisher: HarperCollins
Publication date: 01/25/2022
Pages: 432
Sales rank: 105,869
Product dimensions: 5.20(w) x 8.80(h) x 1.40(d)

About the Author

About The Author
Imani Perry is the author of South to America, winner of the 2022 National Book Award for Nonfiction. She is the Henry A. Morss, Jr. and Elisabeth W. Morss Professor of Studies of Women, Gender and Sexuality and of African and African American Studies at Harvard University. Perry's other books include Looking for Lorraine: The Radiant and Radical Life of Lorraine Hansberry, winner of the 2019 Bograd-Weld Biography Prize from the Pen America Foundation; Breathe: A Letter to My Sons; Vexy Thing: On Gender and Liberation; and May We Forever Stand: A History of the Black National Anthem. Perry, a native of Birmingham, Alabama, who grew up in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and Chicago, lives outside Philadelphia with her two sons.  

Table of Contents

A Note from the Author xi

Introduction xiii

I Origin Stories

An Errand into Wilderness: Appalachia 3

Mother Country: Virginia 33

Animated Roulette: Louisville 53

Mary's Land: Annapolis and the Caves 63

Ironic Capital: Washington, DC 83

II The Solidified South

The Clearing: Upper Alabama 101

Tobacco Road in the Bible Belt: North Carolina 119

King of the South: Atlanta 141

More than a Memorial: Birmingham 153

Pearls Before Swine: Princeton to Nashville 179

When Beale Street Talks: Memphis 199

Soul of the South: The Black Belt 213

III Water People

Home of the Flying Africans: The Low Country 253

Pistoles and Flamboyán: Florida 279

Immobile Women: Mobile 307

Magnolia Graves and Easter Lilies: New Orleans 321

Paraíso: The Bahamas and Havana 347

Conclusion 375

Acknowledgments 385

Index 387

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