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

by Imani Perry

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.

Genres: Nonfiction, History, Race, Memoir, Audiobook, Travel, Politics

608 pages, Paperback

First published January 25, 2022

About the author

Imani Perry, a professor of African American studies at Princeton, first appeared in print at age 3 in the Birmingham (Alabama) News in a photo of her and her parents at a protest against police brutality. She has published widely on topics ranging from racial inequality to hip-hop and is active across various media. She earned a Ph.D. from Harvard University, a J.D. from Harvard Law School and a bachelor's degree from Yale University.

(from http://www.princeton.edu/main/news/ar...)

Reviews

[Traci Thomas · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is so good. Imani Perry is pulling from so many different strands and creating an incredibly compelling narrative about the power and importance of The American South. I struggled at first with the style, but once I figured out what she was doing, I fell in love with this book. It is masterful.

[Raymond · Rating 4 out of 5]

"History orients us and magnifies our present circumstance." -Imani Perry

This may sound cliché but Imani Perry's book South to America is a "love letter" to and a "reckoning" with the "South". I put "South" in quotations marks because people (depending on where you live) have different opinions on what constitutes the South. As a native North Carolinian, growing up I used to think that nothing north of Virginia was considered South. In her book, Perry broadens that definition as she travels from Appalachia to the Caribbean to show that the South is more present in the places you would least expect it in and is a strong influence for the rest of country in the places that we know as the Deep South.

Perry a daughter of the South, specifically Birmingham, AL travels from state to state, meeting interesting people along the way. Each chapter covers a state or region in the South, you learn alot of history and you also get to see what Imani sees as she visits these places. There are times of racial solidarity and pride, especially when she discovers how several of her Princeton colleagues' ancestors originated from the same town or when native Cubans believed she was also Cuban because "Cuba is Black". There are also moments of tension, where Imani experiences racism, subtle and malicious.

Through her travels you will also learn some interesting facts that you may not have know before, such that the Kentucky Derby, at its beginning, was an integrated event before segregation kicked in or that dollar stores originated in the South, just to name a few. I was a big fan of the chapter on my home state which I assume would be the case for most readers. The chapters will probably mean more to you if you have lived or been to those places or have some familiarity with them. This would definitely be a great book to take with you when you travel to Southern regions you have not been to before.

Perry closes this book on the city of Houston, Texas and says "it's just a fragment and a reminder that I have left out so many stories of the South". You get that sentiment throughout the book, she can't cover everything, even though you wish she could. But she does acknowledge the sad fact that so many stories that have been left out are because they have simply been forgotten, in many cases on purpose. For example, the many everyday places where enslaved people were sold outside of fancy auction blocks and the homes and storied landmarks of our ancestors. Meanwhile, monuments, memorials, and markers are erected all over the country for the "great" men of history, many of whom had troubled and racists pasts. Perry reflects on this by saying, "The way some histories are left untraced while monuments to other histories pile up tells you a great deal about what we call "the uses of history"."

It is my hope that Imani Perry's book South to America will be one of the many books whose historical use will be to uncover hidden truths about the American South, how influential it was and continues to be to this day. And that readers, especially those native to the South will begin to mine the South and their respective family histories for more stories to be brought back into the light.

[Emma De Vos Tidd · Rating 1 out of 5]

I liked the idea of this book. I wanted to learn more about the history of slavery and the influence that it had on the American South as well as the impact on Black American culture as we know it today. As a non-Black person, I had hoped to see the South through a different lens that would help me better understand the vast significance that Black people have had on America.

While there was plenty to be learned from the book, I unfortunately had a tough time following what was being said. South to America felt more like a memoir than a factual nonfiction book with the meandering way Perry's ideas were presented. The narrative feels personal and intimate at times, which is not necessarily a bad thing, but then makes sweeping generalizations and broad statements that make assumptions about the nation as a whole. The ideas that were presented were interesting, but each one felt too surface-level for my liking. There were numerous topics and locations that were mentioned, but the author does not go very in-depth which took away from creating any sort of connection for the reader. I feel like Imani Perry wanted this book to be a collection of essays or a memoir, but was told it also has to be a history book, and had to mash the two genres together.

I appreciate what Perry was trying to do, but unfortunately she misses the mark for me. The disjointed narrative, surface-level discussion, and confusing ideas made the book difficult to follow, therefore I do not recommend this book.

[Oscreads · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is filled with ideas that have the power to shake America. Every chapter/section is filled. I especially loved the way Dr. Imani Perry expanded their research and journey throughout the South, historically and physically, by looking beyond what American considers as the South. This is a book that is always moving. And I loved that. In their newest book, Dr. Perry opens up the South for her readers and reveals extraordinary things that will definitely keep you on your toes. This book offers a perspective that I was super captivated by. Side note: I loved what Dr. Perry did with the prose. There were instances where I felt the South enter her writing and I feel like that this did wonders for this history and Dr. Perry’s arguments. This is one to look out for.

[Lauren · Rating 5 out of 5]

11/17/2024 - Re-reading for a December book club discussion

2022 Review:

• SOUTH TO AMERICA: A Journey Below the Mason-Dixon to Understand the Soul of a Nation by Imani Perry, 2022.

History, memoir, journalism - Perry's book defies genre, but overall it is absolutely one thing: a love letter. A letter that expresses deep love, but also criticism (because that too can be love) to a large region on a big continent, a place that is in no way monolithic, that includes mountains, bayous, and islands, a place that has indelibly shaped Perry, and the whole US.

Perry patterns her book on a 1971 memoir/travelogue by literary & music critic, Albert Murray, "South to a Very Old Place". I was unfamiliar with this work, but really appreciated Perry's own "variation on the theme".

Chapters can serve as individual essays about various cities and regions of the south - she begins the journey (curiously?) with John Brown in West Virginia, gently weaving to Kentucky, Tennessee, over to Virginia, and further south. Perry's home state of Alabama gets special treatment in several chapters, before winding towards Mississippi and Louisiana, and a whole chapter on the coast of Georgia (Savannah + the Islands), another on Florida.

Some surprises:

• The Carolinas get a chapter, but I was surprised that there wasn't more. The chapter focused more in NC and tobacco, with fluid lines to VA. South Carolina info is scant - Charleston is mentioned briefly in relation to Savannah.

• Perry expands the traditional /expected lines of the South to the Caribbean, concluding the book with a piece on The Bahamas, Haiti, and Cuba as historical havens, as migration/refugee points, and the complexities of classism and racism in the tourist industry (e.g. June Jordan's 1982 essay "Report from The Bahamas") AND includes a short interview with Assata Shakur from her exile home in Cuba.

Even with all the details I've shared here, barely scratching the surface of what Perry attempts (and achieves!), i.e. Music of the South, Indigenous peoples, Latinidad.

Well over half my life has been spent in the southern states of the US; my birthplace in Tennessee, stints of childhood in Mississippi, Texas, West Virginia, and Virginia, summers with my grandparents and cousins in Alabama, and now, 20-some years in Maryland, the state that is technically below the Mason-Dixon demarcation, but not a state many Americans would deem "The South". I mention this because I may be pre-disposed to read and enjoy a book like this because I know many of these places mentioned intimately, but there are lessons galore here for all, with or without roots in this space.

Perry's notes about small variances in white and Black southern culture were right on, and she takes specific care to note the blurry edges in some spheres (food, linguistics, etiquette) I particularly enjoyed her stories of her mother's life as a noviciate in a Louisiana convent, and how she left the order to have a family; her stepfather, a white southern Jewish man who raised her from early childhood, her Black family in both the North and South, and her parents activism in the Civil Rights movement.

🌟 It is an outstanding work.

📚 Related readings / writers:
• Isabel Wilkerson
• Kiese Laymon
• June Jordan
• Jessica B. Harris
• Clint Smith

[Kathryn]

It's hard for me to give this book a star rating, partly because it's difficult to classify, so I'm not sure how to evaluate it. The narrative is personal and specific, while at the same time making broad statements about "we" Americans and conjecturing about the thoughts and feelings of others. While Perry is an astute observer and a deep thinker, this book was not for me. It's quite meandering and nonlinear; it also assumes the reader learned about or remembers the historic events mentioned. I would have liked more description of the places, a bit more review or context in the historical events she describes, and less of the philosophical musings on broad swaths of people. I was expecting more of a persuasive stance backed by research in addition to personal experience, whereas Perry is doing more observing and meditating, which brings the essays close to poetry, but not close enough for me to read them as such. I wasn't familiar with Perry's work before this; if I had been, I probably would have had different expectations. I heard her speak on a panel about this book and found her ideas and comments very interesting, yet the book feels a bit advanced and academic for a general audience.

[David V. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Received as an ARC via my employer Barnes & Noble. Started 12-31-21; finished 1-7-22. Each chapter is about a different Southern state. Basically I learned that this country still has a long, long way to go to remove racism from its daily life, and White citizens aren't even aware of much of it. This book attempts to educate us. Read this book with an open mind and you'll be a better person when you're done.

[Leigh Gaston · Rating 3 out of 5]

2 1/2 stars
I was looking forward to this book and there were a few aha moments but I am sad to say that I was underwhelmed. Perhaps the author took on too many areas of racism within our country over a big span of time. At first I liked the idea of traveling to various states and seeing history unfold but it was just too much info without much, if any, connection with the previous or upcoming chapters . It was just all over the place.

I appreciate what was attempted but the bottom line is I didn’t connect with most of it and instead of having a better understanding, I finished this disjointed book without being able to articulate anything but the most basic blurb. Unfortunately it just became a chore to finish.

[Theo Logos · Rating 4 out of 5]

While South To America contains histories, it is not a history book. Rather, it is a guided tour of the South (particularly the Black South) by a native daughter of the region. She explores it region by region, starting in Appalachia, relating histories, folkways, foods, industries, everything that makes that region unique, and ties it all back in to race relations and the struggles and triumphs of Black Americans in those regions.
The author was born in Alabama, has family roots in several of the regions she explores, and has a palpable affection for the South. This is an intensely personal book, as Perry relates her own and her family’s stories to illustrate points that she is making. It’s clear that this isn’t an academic tome but a labor of love.

[Hannah · Rating 5 out of 5]

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 is my US Asian history, as well the US white history we are often only taught. I’ll be reading this book many times over.

[chantel nouseforaname · Rating 5 out of 5]

Listennnnnnn... this was incredible. INCREDIBLE. First off, highly recommend listening to the audio and reading the book simultaneously, it's an experience.

Imani Perry is a genius. Her genius can never be understated. I wasn't ready for so much of what I learned in South to America. Reading this gave me the same feeling I had reading A Little Devil in America: Notes in Praise of Black Performance by Hanif Abdurraqib.

I love when people explore history and culture and include an element of memoir. I love when folks incorporate the examination and exaltation of Black art and music in juxtaposition to history. Being that most music is Black music, it is always incredible to follow an author through the history of that music, and going through the South and the musical landscape of the South in this book was so special, so much like Hanif's book. I love that Imani Perry takes it even a step further than Hanif, situating herself in history as well, exploring what spaces throughout the South look like, feel like, and are like now in this current era. She explores the landscape on so many levels, reflecting and postulating on the history and it's current truths, after all the blood that has been shed in those spaces. I love how she gets really epistemological in her movements throughout the South. I'm intrigued and was enriched by how she examined the environmental disasters and how they affect the people, predominantly Black, that live in the South and how white supremacy has let these devastations occur. How white supremacy and racism have created insane experiences for everyone, has negatively impacted everyone.

My soul was barely ready for the discussions about Breonna Taylor, Ms. Perry's analysis of Kentucky: its luxuries and its continued deep-rooted evils was hard. How a lack of justice for Black folks is a painful standard that is hard to be surprised by. Ms. Perry somehow was loud and quiet about the need to vote, and the need to disrupt the power of people who are power-drunk and corrupt. She also didn't mince words talking about various hypocrisies, saying:

"It is bad enough that Nazi Germany adopted racist ideologies from the United States, but it seems worse still that after they committed genocide, their scientists were invited to Jim Crow Alabama, to plot their way to the sky."

and

“Murder is a tool of White supremacy. Some of us don’t recall living without it.”

Speaking of murder, it was also interesting to learn that white people tried to kill the legend Gordon Parks because they didn't like that he captured their cruelty and exposed their ugliness. This is from a chapter talking about Mobile, Alabama. Ain't that a fucking trip! I went to a Gordon Parks exhibit here in Toronto and it was also so thought-provoking. Seeing what I saw at that exhibit, I can believe that and am upset by the fact that, white folks as they do everything in this world, tried to end him. Her reflections on the teachings of W.E.B. Du Bois were also intriguing. Also, was integration the best thing for the Black community? Points are discussed and statements are made.

This book will make you mad, however, there's also a lot of beauty examined a lot of pride and joy shared as well as truth. It makes you realize how Black folks make a way outta no way, protected by God and the will to live. I loved this read.

Music being the all-important thing that it is in my life, this was one of my favourite passages in the book:

“There would be no rock music without Memphis and Mississippi and no Motown golden oldies without Alabama. There would have been no national uprising of “burn, baby, burn” all across urban centers in 1968 without what was done to Martin Luther King Jr. in Memphis, and no ripple across the world either.

A tourist visit to Memphis will tell you some exciting stories about the history of American music, and the same is true of Nashville. You will bop around with familiarity, whether you are American or a tourist from another corner of the world. Everybody moves to our music. Just remember, the sounds of this nation that captured the whole world were born out of repression. Up from the gutbucket, as it were.”

Excerpts From South to America by Imani Perry
This material may be protected by copyright.

[Allison · Rating 2 out of 5]

Meandering and bitter.

[Clif Hostetler · Rating 3 out of 5]

How does one consider a region of the country that contains their family history and roots, but also contains a legacy of racism against their ancestors? That is how I perceive this book's task, an exploration of that question. The author is African American and was born in Montgomery, Alabama, but her family moved to New England where she grew up. In this memoir/travelog she tells of her visits throughout the American South seeking a sense of home but visiting as an outsider. Her thoughts and commentary are made from her perspective as a person of color, and she makes frequent reference to historical and recent racial atrocities that occurred in the places visited.

Her pondering of untold stories has the flavor of a meditation on the South, her language at times sounding elegiac. The author is obviously sensitive to signs of racism and often addresses the continuing struggle toward freedom. Her narrative is filled with history and commentary on current events as well as frequent interviews with both common folks and credentialed academics. She starts with visits to the border states, then proceeds through the lower southern states, then moves on the Caribbean islands which she considers to be an extension of the American South, and then finally ends up in Houston, Texas.

The following are excerpts from the book which I believe can provide interesting examples of the author’s writing. The first two quotations are taken from the Introduction at the beginning of the book and offers some general observations about the South and racism.

Race is at the heart of the South, and at the heart of the nation. Like the conquest of Indigenous people, the creation of racial slavery in the colonies was a gateway to habits and dispositions that ultimately became the commonplace ways of doing things in this country. They came to a head at the dawn of the Civil War, only to settle back into the old routines for a hundred years before reaching a fever pitch again before receding. (p.14)

… race remains the most dramatic light switch of the country and its sorting. And yet "racism," despite all evidence of its ubiquity, is still commonly described as "belonging" to the South. (p.14)

I think the author identifies herself as an exile storyteller as described in the following quotation.

Critical theorist Walter Benjamin once distin-guished between two types of storytellers: one is a keeper of the traditions; another is the one who has journeyed afar and tells stories of other places. But there is a third, and that is the exile. The exile, with a gaze that is obscured by distance and time, may not always be precise in terms of information. Details get outdated. But if the exile can tell a story that gets to a funda-mental truth and also tell you something about two core human feelings, loneliness and homesickness, along with a yearning for a place where they once belonged and/or a reality that has evaporated, then they have acquired an essential wisdom, earning them the title of storyteller. (p.166)

The following is a reminder about the limitations of generalizations about any region of the country.

The South is extremely diverse and complex. It is multilingual, speaks different dialects, and has different histories. But we do call certain things Southern in a broad way, some because they are quintessential and some because they're a marker of "not that." as in not Northern, which really means not Midwestern, Northeastern, mid-Atlantic, Northwestern, Californian, or far Southwest in general. (p.179)

Perhaps the following can offer some insight into why white conservatives are so uptight about sex—interracial sex in particular.

What make a secret a secret? It really isn't 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. Much of the South's conservatism is little more than an effort to zone where we place the yearnings that we don’t know what to do with. Every time a pastor faces a scandal, remember that. No one thinks these things don't happen, but many, if not most, think they are supposed to be hidden. 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. (p.198)

The following is a quotation from Mark Twain that was included in this book. It's an interesting insight into how civilization must have appeared to the indigenous people when its first arrival was whiskey.

How solemn and beautiful is the thought, that the earliest pioneer of civilization, the van-leader of civilization, is never the steamboat, never the railroad, never the newspaper, never the Sabbath-school, never the missionary—but always whiskey! Such is the case. Look history over; you will see. The missionary comes after the whiskey—I mean he arrives after the whiskey has arrived; next comes the poor immigrant, with ax and hoe and rifle; next, the trader; next, the miscellaneous rush; next, the gambler, the desperado, the highwayman, and all their kindred in sin of both sexes; and next, the smart chap who has bought up an old grant that covers all the land; this brings the lawyer tribe; the vigilance committee brings the undertaker. All these interests bring the newspaper; the newspaper starts politics and a railroad; all hands turn to and build a church and a jail. (p.255)

The following excerpt revises the question of why so many African Americans left the South.

The South has remained the region where the majority of African Americans live. And even with the declining population in the Blackest South, the Blackest Southerners remain. So the question I always ask is not why did Black folks leave, but why did they stay?
The answer is home. If everyone had departed, no one would have been left to tend the ancestors' graves. (p.275)

I've heard comments similar to the following from other African Americans who lived through the desegregation experience.

One of the difficult side effects of desegregation—and you'll hear it again and again from Black people who lived in the before time—is that something precious escaped through society's opened doors. Even acknowledging how important desegregation was, the persistence of American racism alongside the loss of the tight-knit Black world does make one wonder. What if we had held on to those tight networks ever more closely, rather than seeking our fortune in the larger White world that wouldn't ever fully welcome us beyond one or two at a time? Such reflection often leads to a sorrowful place, though not what I would call regret. Black folk knew they had to push the society to open its doors. They just didn't know how much it was going to cost. (p.318)

There is the one-drop rule, and then there is the race gradations scale. In either case, darker means lower.

People make a big to-do about the fact that there are gradations of race throughout the Americas, as though the one-drop rule in the United States is somehow crueler. But one thing I know is that the residues of empire, colonialism, and the transatlantic slave trade mean that no matter where you are, the Blacker you are, the lower your status, and any sort of Blackness at all can sometimes serve as a reason to kick you out, … (p.432)

The page numbers shown above are from the ebook I read, but they appear to not correlate with the paper edition.

[Jackie Lantern · Rating 1 out of 5]

The author never gets over her naked hatred and disdain for present day Caucasians to make this book interesting. Instead she just presents as bitter, thrown in with some historical dates in every observation she makes. The author dwells a lot on herself and her own feelings, as is her right, but from a historical account, you’d like more. Slaves had it really bad, we all know that, and we are appalled by it. But it is unfair to group modern day Caucasians in with slaveholding southerners. Most Caucasians want nothing but equal treatment in life and law for every human, so work from the premise instead that modern Caucasians aren’t the devil and aren’t out to kill you, and we all might get along as a society SO much better! The author’s ancestor Esther/Easter/Stace would be so proud that her descendant was able to be so successful in her life, but would not understand her descendant’s naked hatred carried over from a situation that no longer exists. Also, the author’s frequently disparagement of all Republican presidents of the modern era is unnecessary editorializing that doesn’t move forward the study of the South at all, but does function to turn off A LOT of her readers.

[Jamie Smith · Rating 4 out of 5]

In this book Imani Perry looks at how the Black experience is informed by the past, from slavery, Reconstruction, the Jim Crow era, and up to the present. Her narrative is structured around visits to various places in the South, which for her purposes stretches from West Virginia to Cuba. For those with only a cursory knowledge of the history of Being Black in America, it will come as a shock. To maintain their privileged position, even if it was only one notch above the Blacks, some Whites were and are willing to do anything, from the soft violence of job discrimination, denial of voting rights, and Separate-but-(Never)-Equal, up to intimidation, assault, rape, and murder. And then they go to church on Sundays and no doubt think of themselves as fine Christians.

Change is perceived as a threat in many parts of the South. Blacks pulling themselves up by their bootstraps is especially feared, but it is not just race that causes this reaction, “when the racial, gender, and sexual orders were threatened in the mid-twentieth century by civil rights activists and hippies, an old-time religion and ideology flowered on the terms of discontent. In 1979, Jerry Falwell’s Moral Majority was born in Virginia. That’s not incidental.” (p. 54)

There is a particularly good section on Nazis in America. Not White Trash wannabe Nazis, but the real thing. After World War II the United States offered sanctuary to many of Germany’s rocket scientists, conveniently overlooking their past. Wernher von Braun became an American hero for his work in the space program, especially as chief architect of of the Saturn V moon rocket, even though he had been a member of the Nazi party and used slave labor to build the wartime V-2 rockets. In fact, more prisoners died building the V-2s than the rockets killed during the war. I think Imani Perry does a good job putting the issue in perspective:

How do we consider Nazis in Alabama? Where does their presence lie in the story of the state? Is it simply an alarming fact that they moved from one hateful, murderous order to another? Or is the better lens one of relationship? The cold political calculus of how to achieve global power included a sign that the proclaimed democratic values of the nation weren’t as deep as declared might be the most frightful and the most honest option – maybe it simply indicated that anything, absolutely anything, could be justified for empire. (p. 104)

In addition to discussing the history of the places she visits, she also meets with Black artists, intellectuals, and politicians, and her conversations with them are insightful and deftly handled. She has a particular interest in music, describing it in detail and using good examples.

Men and women like the ones she talked to are making a difference in people’s lives, Black, White, everyone. Progress is possible, and it is being made, but ever so slowly. In Paul Theroux’s book Deep South he describes his trips to this region, and writes that Whites are uncomfortable discussing racial issues past or present. They point to a vague and indeterminate future and say that things are getting better, and that rocking the boat would only cause trouble. Their idea of progress is glacial change across many generations, yet they resented being told there are things that could be done today to make a difference. Theroux provides an illuminating historical quote that gets to the heart of White attitudes to Black progress, as true today as when first written: “’The South gives indications of being afraid of the Negro. I do not mean physical fear,’ Frank Tannenbaum wrote ninety years ago in Darker Phases of the South. ‘It is not a matter of cowardice or bravery; it is something deeper and more fundamental. It is a fear of losing grip upon the world. It is an unconscious fear of changing status.’”

One mark of a good book is that you can’t get it out of your head, and by that standard this is a very good book. I keep thinking over the issues she raises, and then wondering if the progress is going to continue or come to a halt and be rolled back. There are many conservatives who are clamoring to halt social programs which poor people, not just Blacks, depend on, and their insistence that racism is dead means they can blame the less fortunate for circumstances that were forced on them.

I liked this book but there were two things in it that gave me some trouble. One is the author’s oratorical writing style, which made me wonder if she was consciously imitating the delivery of Black preachers. For instance, though she makes the good point that “Jim Crow laws were defied every time people on the darker side of the color line opened their mouths and released sound and air from the diaphragm into the ether,” everything after “color line” could be replaced by “spoke.” I guess this writing style is intentional, but there were probably some interesting conversations between her and her editor about it.

There is also a strange incident in Cuba that had me shaking my head. She visits some kind of shaman and is impressed by how well he was able to describe her life even though they had never met before. Writing about it she seems close to accepting him as legitimate. She is a professor at Yale; how could she not know that professional charlatans like this stay in business only if they are good at cold-reading their marks? And yet she fell for it; I bet she reads her horoscope every day too.

With those quibbles aside, this is a good book, an important one about race, progress, and resistance. To those who say we have come a long way since 1865 it is a clear reminder that we have not come not far enough, that there is so much yet to be done.

[Bruce Katz]

I lived with this book for a long time, almost a year. Dropping in and out, putting it aside for a couple of weeks — coming up for air — then picking it up again. I was sometimes fascinated, sometimes surprised, and shaken, outraged, perplexed, and (now and again) a little lost. Many pages in my hard copy of the book have corners folded down, paragraphs marked by pencil and read for a second or third time. I was struck by the author’s intelligence and breadth of knowledge, and perhaps most of all, her willingness — this will likely make no sense to people who have not read "South to America," and maybe many who have — to create a dense, cerebral psychological landscape on the page and at the same time open herself emotionally, to expose the raw depth of her anger, longing, sadness, disappointment, and love.

Almost a year. Nine months, to be precise. Make of that what you will. And yet, after all that time, I can’t articulate what I think about the book, which won the 2022 National Book Award for Nonfiction. I can’t even explain my uncertainty.

Perry was born in Alabama and raised in Cambridge, Massachusetts. PhD and JD from Harvard, holder of a named chair at Princeton University. Researching and writing the book took her to cities and towns throughout the American South — not just the ‘down there’ below the Mason-Dixie South that Northerners like me typically have in mind when we hear the word, but the South that includes Maryland and the District of Columbia. Her argument: that race and racism are foundational in Southern identity and that the habits and attitudes that were historically built upon that foundation have taken spread throughout the United States until “ultimately [they] became the commonplace ways of doing things in this country.” “South to America” explores in terms both intellectual and deeply personal what this ‘nationalized South’ is: its history, geography (mental and physical), literature, music, mythology, emotional, interpersonal.

Her argument is convincing if not always easily perceived. The book demands attention, that the reader not speed through it. Perry casts a wide net. One chapter will talk about Founding Fathers, another about the blues or Toni Morrison, W.E.B. Du Bois, Ralph Ellison. Colonial America: Early eighteenth century American revivalist preacher Jonathan Edwards who wrote a sermon about sin and the soul on the blank side of a piece of paper, the other side of which was the bill of sale of a slave given the name Venus (the “transit of Venus,” in Perry’s description: “a fascinating example of reuse and resourcefulness: a sermon on top of human trafficking.”) Revolutionary Era America. The great Migration. Efforts to suppress the past and efforts to illuminate it.

Writing of Founding Fathers and the untenable contradiction between claiming God-given rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness even as one owns other human beings, Perry observes, “When the ugliness is brought up, you can always expect the ‘men of their time’ line will be dropped, as though accountability for destruction has an expiration date. But a distinction is made when speaking about the Soul in this regard. The South is not afforded that troubling grace except when we are talking about that legion of Southern founding fathers (they are counted differently). And here’s why, I think…. There is consensus that the South is supposed to bear the brunt of the shame, and that the nation’s sins are disposed upon it. So the South in the founding us muted. But if we are to tell the truth about how central the region is to all of us, we have to be honest about the shared habits of the past and their justification.

Perry expands on our conflicted and imperfect sense of who we are as a nation and how we got here. “A nation is an imagined community,” she says. “The shared narrative and common mythos of country people produce fellow feeling and common entities. 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.”

America, she says, is “a land of big dreams and bigger lies,” and history “an instruction.” In our time, with its angry debates and confrontations about how American history should be taught, Perry’s observation is sharply perceptive: What you neglect to attend to from the past, you will surely ignore in the present. If you doubt what I’m saying, look into the production of your computer and desk, your kid’s toys. Look into the kitchen staff at your favorite restaurant, the revenue streams your state gets from prison, and the workers at the side of the highway as you drive by.

Perry describes the split consciousness underlying our sense of ourselves as participants in the American story and heirs to American exceptionalism by drawing our minds to what she sees as a basic fact about the South.” The South, she writes, "is a monster of a place that one cannot help but at least partially revile. And everybody knows it, no matter how much they might glory in neo-Confederacy. The Janus face of Southern Whiteness — the know what they’ve done is wrong, and they know you know; they hate you for it, and hate themselves for it, too. ”

Is this observation right? Who can say? But it sharply distills the essence of our constant national skirmishes over defining America and Americans. “South to America” is an important book, a passionate and deeply personal meditation on how, as Perry puts it, “the back-then is inside the now.” It’s also a book I continue to wrestle with.

As is my habit, I will conclude by sharing some passages I take to be both representative and important.

At one point in the book she mentions Pip, the Black cabin boy in “Moby-Dick” who falls overboard and is driven mad by the experience. This brief aside leads Perry to a searing portrait of the psychological costs of Blackness in America: You hold your people close, but that… is a matter of understanding thatchy have been ripped out of your arms again and again over generations, sold away, killed by a grinding gear, a careening car, off in the labor camp, off in the chain gang, down from the lynching tree, away to the prison, dead from the sugar, from sepsis, from cancer, from a broken heart. The way life kills, with unapologetic abandon, is precisely why we hold each other so close. And get so angry when our love is riven.

Elsewhere, a visit to Memphis leads Perry to talk about the blues and jazz: A tourist visit to Memphis will tell you some exciting stories about the history of American music… You will bop around with familiarity, whether you are American or a tourist from another corner of the world. Everybody moves to our music. Just remember, the sounds of this nation that captured the whole world were born out of repression. Up from the gutbucket, as it were. You know the song, maybe even the story, but I want you to study its provenance. Because it belongs to you, too. And you are implicated; we all are. But will you serve as a witness?

There is more I could say — about the power of Perry’s analyses and her anger, about her encounters and conversations with people as she tours the South. And about the painterly sensibility (Edward Hopper, maybe?) of her description of “Walking, close to midnight, in the Walmart, with that insistent sickly blue brightness against the dark outside that turns everyone sallow and shows every crevice and caked sore, is a lesson in the loneliness of poverty that was born in the shadow of prosperity.” Or the poetry that is evoked when she visits the state in which she was born: “Writers have praised the Alabama sky at daybreak. Pure blue. I always preferred. The night sky when the deepest indigo is broken by heat lightning. The lit sky flashed sharp and angular, a blaze without a sound, and the lightning bugs danced.”


A postscript: Among the many passages Perry herself shares in the book is one written by James Baldwin. I hadn’t read it before, and I found it shattering.

In his seminal book “The Souls of Black Folk (1903),” W.E.B. Du Bois wrote,”“It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one's self through the eyes of others, of measuring one's soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity.”

Nearly half a century later, Baldwin poignantly echoed DuBois: “It is a very grave matter to be forced to imitate a people for whom you know — which is the price of your performance and survival — you do not exist. It is hard to imitate a people whose existence appears, mainly, to be made tolerable by their bottomless gratitude that they are not, thank heaven, you.”

[kaylasbookishlife · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really enjoyed what this book was trying to do and I think there was a lot of important observations in the book that make the reader really take a look at the Southern region of America.

To be honest, I have to give this just a three star rating because of the writing style. It was often confusing to follow along. It was quite dense and nonlinear; it assumed the reader knew a lot of the background information and context of historical places and events. As a Canadian I just didn't know some things and there were a lot of acronyms that I don't think were properly explained.

I would have liked to have a bit more organization within the chapters. I felt like I would start reading a chapter and just when I was beginning to understand it would switch to a different topic and I could not figure out how they were related.

To sum up, the content was good, however it was hard to absorb and understand because of the writing style.

[Sean Owen · Rating 2 out of 5]

The idea of travel as a way to gain a better understanding of history and the present has been used by many books. In the hands of a capable writer, the premise delivers. "South to America" focuses on the South and race. Even in the hands of a capable writer, this book would likely be overshadowed by Clint Smith's excellent "How the Word is Passed". Smith's work is driven by his curiosity, thoughtfulness and desire to understand. Perry's work is dominated by her closed-mindedness, scolding, and self-aggrandizement.

"South to America" lacks any sense of coherent structure. Chapters bounce around from place to place, driven by nothing more than that's where the author happened to be for some other purpose and she decided to cram some history in. Worse still she wants to tell the reader, in tiresome detail, about the book event or cocktail party that brought her to visit that place.

Her privilege and classism are major barriers. At one point when getting in a cab with a white driver she remarks that this is the first white person outside of a store or university that she's interacted with. She's wildly out of touch with regular people, though she never tires of telling the reader about the feelings and motivations of poor black people.

What ultimately dooms "South to America" is that the author is temperamentally unsuited to the kind of work she has set out to do. Travel writing and getting an understanding of a place and its people requires a generosity of spirit and a genuine desire to know others. She couldn't be more unsuited to the task. At one point she's talking with a Confederate war reenactor and wonders to herself why he does this and why the Confederacy. She speculates to the reader, but never actually asks the man why.

In the first chapter, she criticizes the writer Tony Horwitz for ultimately being too cozy with Confederate reenactors in his "Confederates in the Attic" Horwitz's open-mindedness and curiosity about others are what Perry seems incapable of and what are essential to this sort of project.

The people who live on the coasts don't really understand this country because they don't get out of the big cities. They don't see what things are like in rural areas, in the middle of the country or the South. Imani Perry is not the guide to take them there. Read Clint Smith and read Tony Horwitz instead.

[Diane S ☔ · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thoughts soon.

[Nuha · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thank you to Ecco and Netgalley for the Advanced Reader's Copy! Available Jan 2022 Sometimes a book wanders into your life at the perfect moment. This is one of those serendipitous occasions, where I just finished teaching Protest Literature in an English course at Louisiana State University. Told in beautiful prose, Imani Perry's South to America takes us to the heartland of the American South. Intertwining personal, political, and social histories, Perry takes on a journey through the Southern States. Elegant and emotional, the narrative commands our respect. South to America asks us to consider how the South is both a place of love and anguish, history and future and leads us to a deeper understanding of it means, truly, to be a Southerner.

[Emily · Rating 5 out of 5]

At some point during reading South to America, I realized I had to start taking notes - I'd come across one too many great sentences to keep passing them by. Then, I realized just how hard the task would be: it turns out, for all her breezy style, Perry punches good and hard. Every other page she seems to deliver a truism more dead-on and illuminating than the next. There were so many brilliant lines in this book that made me think and then think some more.

This is to say: in many ways, this book fits a genre, but it far transcends it, too. (I realize that my familiarity with this genre runs to mostly books written by white authors, so take this analysis of it with a grain of salt.) We Americans love the philosophy of the open road as a vehicle for untangling history and philosophy, as a panacea for a broken heart or a stuck soul. Tony Horowitz, Paul Theroux, Steinbeck - you hit the road, talk about the scenery, talk about the people and the food and the dimly-lit motels and the strange and awesome people. I had just finished Didion's South and West, another entry in this familiar genre, and the two were an excellent study in contrast.

Perry does not trap herself in the rote, though - just uses it as a framework. Roughly summarized: her book is a meditation on the meaning of Americanness and the narratively-bounded history of America, which is in it of itself a history of race in America. These things are inextricable, more so than we might think. As she points out:

"Three of the four presidents on Mount Rushmore, idolatry knifed into the Lakota Sioux’s Six Grandfathers holy site, are Southerners… there are also three Southerners on the Confederate monument in Georgia… Janus-faced history: two monuments, two visions of heroism, one tradition. The tension implied in Stone Mountain, that between the Union and Confederacy, is deceptive” (40)

The truth of this cuts just as cleanly as her verbs. She winds through the states and regions of the south, spanning West Virginia to DC (is it really the South, she asks) through the waterworks of the Lowcountry to Memphis and Florida, ending, finally, in the Bahamas and Havana, highlighting the argument of many writers and historians that the South is not just American - it is, after all, the Global South.

Occasionally Perry falls into triteness; some of her chapters - all of which she wrapped up with neat philosophy - rang less true than others. But overall she has created a thoughtful and insightful work that pushes you to consider new ways of interpreting how we experience and imagine Americanness.

[Kiara · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book wasn't what I thought it would be--it was so much more. Through a combination of history, memoir, and just some simply stunning storytelling, Imani Perry has redefined not only what the South is, but what a reckoning of it could look like.

While I was reading this, I did a poll on my Instagram (@kiara.in.th.stacks) asking what states my followers considered to be a part of the South. Being a Southerner myself (Carolina born and bred!), I was curious. The answers varied a lot more than I expected. There were the usual suspects: North and South Carolina, Louisiana, Virginia, Mississippi, Alabama, Tenessee. Surprisingly, everyone left out states like Florida, West Virginia, and Texas. When asked, the people who left these states out said that they (the states) just didn't seem very "Southern".

And what does that mean, "Southern"? In South To America, Imani Perry picks that concept apart, but she also expands upon it in ways that are totally unexpected, even to someone like me who's never lived anywhere else but the South. Stereotypes are dismantled and shown to be what they are: a mix of fact and fiction that have become prolific and harmful. I learned so much from this book, and my view of the South has grown so much. Before reading this book I would have never seen Kentucky or DC as being part of the South, but now I do! Perry really put so much research into this book, and getting stories from the people of the region was a nice touch.

I found myself highlighting and making notes in so many parts of this book, and I can see myself coming back to it for years to come. This book was obviously such a labor of love for Perry, and I greatly appreciate her work. I'll never look at the South the same way again, and I hope that other readers leave with the same impression. The South has influenced so much of America, and it's a shame that the rest of the US often looks down on us as backward. If the South is backwards, then so is the rest of the US, and it's time that that be acknowledged.

[Jan Rice · Rating 3 out of 5]

I wanted to read this book because I heard the author talk about it on Book TV. I thought she sounded less rigidly ideological than most; also wanted to read it because it's about the south and because of what it sounded like she had written about the south.

It turns out she has some beliefs about how she talks to others, such as not being unnecessarily abrasive. That could account for my reaction to her book talk. But I did not find her free of ideology.

An ideology -- even a hypothesis -- can guide, but can also blind, and confirmation bias is a potent force. I'm not sure she's open to letting her observations change her mind, plus there could be social pressure not to do so.

Well, she did learn she could talk with a Confederate reenactor, that is, to people whom she didn't think she could talk to. But that sort of thing didn't seem to be a major revelation; rather, a testament to her own ability to face it.

People from other parts of the country or world scapegoat the south, make the south bear the burden of racism -- Forsyth County, for example. Similarly, I'm from a suburban town adjoining Atlanta where actions taken served to discourage Jews from moving there between 1902 and 1932, so that I grew up thinking Jews were as rare as hen's teeth. That's the south, one might be forgiven for thinking. However, James W. Loewen tells us that "sundown towns" actually were Northern and Western phenomena. So, I thought the author would be straightening out such stereotypes. Maybe, to some extent, but her main thesis, I thought, is that the south gives the true picture of the country. She's not out to rescue the south.

Her book is a combo memoir and history. She's very free-flowing and poetic. But has few positive things to say on the society as a whole, not even, for example, about the new MLK Jr. statue in DC: we haven't yet embraced him, she says. So I took notice of her wholehearted positive feelings about the National Museum of African American History, and also about the Historically Black Colleges and Universities. It was a good feeling to hear about something she liked.

She says near the first that this book is not a history but it is a true story. She could mean it reflects her true feelings.

But I stumbled across a stray fact that isn't true: she claims Jews owned slaves at a higher rate than others. That appears based on outdated and discredited info. (https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/... -- or if this link won't publish, search as I did.)

She has a Jewish step-father she loves so could feel that makes up for the slavery comment. She does allude to the ambivalent place of Jews in the racial hierarchy. By and large, this book isn't about Jews per se. Nevertheless, should the slur she made without references have been allowed to stand? Did it get by the awards committee unnoticed, or, worse, did they sign on?

Another smaller missed fact: she said ginseng was a new hillbilly hustle. Well, according to Hasia R. Diner's Roads Taken: The Great Jewish Migrations to the New World and the Peddlers Who Forged the Way, not a new hustle.

She has a youthful appearance so at first I had the impression this was an early book in which she's working out her impressions. She could still be, of course, but this isn't her first. She has written a number of them.

I read this book in double time since patrons were queued up for it at the library, so that I couldn't renew. The author had won the National Book Award in Nonfiction for this book. Thanks to the library for the opportunity to read it. I made it through in short order. All this means I have my notes at hand but no book.

She has a stereotypical bad view of capitalism. Many people do. How can self-interest lead to anything good for society? Or greed? It's counterintuitive. The Greeks of antiquity felt the same. It may help to remember that while "greed" has a negative valence, we do tend to value motivation. Ambition has its good points too.

The author may understand capitalism better than she knows. Take note of her older relative's sofa with its protective plastic cover, bought on time and outlasting the salesman who sold it. She knows that's some kind of a triumph, and it is: not materialism, not consumerism, but a capitalistic triumph by which the socially mobile relative, emulating those who outranked her, lifted herself.

The brash Atlanta culture she pictures, though, is a horse of a different color. Yes there is the acquisitiveness, that other word for greed, but in this case something has gone wrong, the would-be upward mobility being toward a culture that will not strengthen or sustain. The author does not say so directly, but it's what I thought I was reading between the lines, and I agree.

She thinks the Black people's God is the God of Exodus while the conqueror's God is something else again: the God of slaves, the God of masters. These things are complex. If she (or Black people in general) gain in power, will their God who led them be morphing into something more negative?

We must watch out for a tendency toward "mine is good, yours is bad."

A similar logical difficulty crops up in automatically aligning success with being undeserving.

The American story -- that we're all equal and have the same shot, and that if you work hard, you can get ahead -- has fallen on hard times. Hence these other stories arise to make sense out of what is happening, but I hope we don't throw the baby out with the bathwater.

"Throw the baby out with the bathwater?" See how I talk? All the proverbs and idiomatic expressions? The colloquialisms? That's southern. She does it too, at least in her writing.

That's the best part of this book.

I don't like the creation of "Whiteness." Don't like any such essentialism or assigning monolithic aspects to one's perceived opponents. It's a way of creating oneself (or one's group), while assigning all negatives to "the other." It's creating stories about someone else for one's own vindication. It's not loving the other as oneself. It's not I and Thou.

As was done with Blackness, for instance?

It's understandable. But as my mother used to say, two wrongs don't make a right.

A major concern is that a reaction will occur.
As the narrative goes, the whites will always take away the gains.

Don't stop with blame but take up agency, so that won't happen.

See how she has me talking with her throughout? (Even talking back.)

She thinks what she's written is true and is right, while what others have written before, particularly white people who saw differently or who didn't much see Black people at all, is wrong.

I conceive of her as looking through a particular lens through which she can see what hasn't been seen before. Through that lens she can see errors of the past and fill in the gaps.

That doesn't mean her lens is the only lens.
It doesn't mean everybody should look through that lens.

We simplify so as to focus on errors and what has been missed, not to say it's the truth and the only viewpoint. Not to simplify reality.

It's her job to look through her lens and enlarge our view of reality (which is complicated), and that's what she has done.

[Diz · Rating 4 out of 5]

Imani Perry, a Southerner, takes a deep look at the soul of the South. The South is not as simple as those from outside might believe. Of course, there is much to criticize since it has a history of violence and abuse towards those with darker skin tones--a history which it has not entirely outgrown. The author is deeply aware of these injustices from her own personal experiences and from growing up in a family involved with the Civil Rights Movement, so she doesn't pull any punches when there is criticism to give. However, she also points out those things that comfort her about the South that she can't find elsewhere. As an expat from the South myself, this is an aspect of the book that I can identify with.

What pleasantly surprised me is that this book is a lot more personal than I was expecting it to be. Each chapter focuses on a certain city or area that the author has visited, and she shares her experiences in those places, which lead to some insights on the South. This personal touch grows on you, and by the end of the book it feels as if you are listening to the stories of an old friend.

[Becky · Rating 5 out of 5]

So, you know that I had to read this, right? I have a whole shelf dedicated to The South (it's capitalized, fight me.) so I had to. As soon as I heard of this book, onto the hold list I went, and as soon as it came in from the library, I started listening to it, despite the fact that I was already listening to a book on quite similar themes, though the other focuses primarily on Britain. There was some overlap (and sometimes eerily timely overlap), but they were different enough that I was able to easily do both at the same time.

So, in this review, I'm going to start with my criticisms.

Firstly, Imani Perry reads the audio herself, and for me, that can be an iffy prospect. It's pretty rare that I feel as though the author is the right reader for their book, though there are exceptions to this. I'm not sure that I would consider this to be an exception. I didn't DISLIKE her reading, and since this was written very clearly from her own perspective, and incorporating her own history and life when relevant, I think it added a nice touch for her to read it herself. But it definitely matters that this is nonfiction and that she could read it entirely in her own voice, because I didn't feel like she had much range to do anyone else's. In addition, she read VERY slowly. I usually listen to audio at around 1.5x to 1.7x, which to me is normal conversational speaking pace, and what I'm comfortable listening to and following. I had to bump the speed of this audiobook up to 1.85x to accomplish the same pace. That's not really a criticism - she is a writer, and an educator, and not a professional audiobook reader. It's OK to have different skills. Likely she was focused on ensuring that she was reading clearly and accurately, and I definitely appreciate when readers do that. I can always adjust on my end.

One thing that did feel a little negative about her reading though was a sort of staccato cadence. Her writing has a very lyrical, poetic flowy style, but her reading of it didn't. I don't know (but suspect) that the speed was to blame, but it may have exacerbated it and made it stand out.

OK, those are my criticisms. Otherwise, I really enjoyed this book. It is really good - a look at cities and regions of the South, what makes them part of the South, many of the historical events and cultural nuances of each area, and how they came to be and how they've changed and shifted over time, as well as random facts and info and her personal perceptions and any history she or her family had there.

I grew up in The South, and in one of the cities she mentions, and I have a love/hate relationship with it. But I think my love is for a version of the mythologized South, rather than the South it really is. This book offers glimpses of both versions of The South, and does so honestly and with a critical, but fair, eye.

I highly recommend it, and I'll definitely be reading Perry's older books as well.

[Andre(Read-A-Lot) · Rating 4 out of 5]

Imani Perry is a musician with a pen. A lyricist with page as composition, she writes as if she is singing a song and it reads so beautifully. I’m a big fan, in fact I’m moving her into rarified territory. She is the newest member of my event category. Where her books are now events, not just another book, but an event I must attend to.

This one is a love letter to the “South” written as part travel diary, part memoir, with history as foundation for present. She manages to tell a story that is both personal yet not constricted. She highlights different Southern cities summarizing their particular idiosyncrasies, always with a nod to their particular histories.

And the prose is always commanding and demanding that you keep reading through these pages. There are so many passages I highlighted that if I start quoting them here, this review will go on and on. Just read it! Imani Perry, you have done it again. I’m eagerly awaiting the next Imani Perry event.

[Jan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Happy to see this win the National Book Award for 2022 Nonfiction. Imani Perry turns her historian’s eye to the American South, going state by state and area by area and including the Bahamas and Cuba. I found the results to be fascinating, deeply informative and relevant to today’s issues. Perry’s acceptance speech was beautiful…check it out!

[Delana Owen · Rating 3 out of 5]

There were times while reading this book that I was drawn back to my childhood and all the things from that time and place that make me love the south. And there were times that I was frustrated by the author’s lack of understanding of MY south. Imani Perry was born in Birmingham but she moved to the NE at 5 so her experiences are nostalgic summer visits through the lens of her real life somewhere else. She has spent a lifetime studying race and the history of race and the impact of race on relationships. She is definitely an expert on that and I respect her ability to understand and clarify historical events in the context of the time.

I’m not sure what she wanted this book to be. It flits through places and times in the south superficially and indulgently, telling us about her special relationships with well-known people and name dropping brushes with others. I eagerly looked forward to different parts of the south and was disappointed in her choices. The best description was early in the book when she addressed Appalachia. Much more attention was on the urban south, because that is really all she knows. I missed the rural south in this book.

I ate up her more analytical and factual descriptions of historical events because I want to understand how we came to be where we are as different races living together in one South and one country. Unfortunately, I learned things from her experience that gave me less hope. Dr. Perry has spent a lifetime studying race and racial history - and she is changed because of it. Her descriptions of interactions with whites as she traveled around to prep for this book showed how much distance she feels between races. Despite those people being kind or open or friendly, she didn’t accept those overtures as pure or freely given. She constantly saw whites as having a hidden agenda, wondering what was behind a friendly gesture or a question - and imagining them in a different time as an overt racist.

Likewise, she saw an agenda behind many historical events that showed those same feelings of mistrust and suspicion. I’m sure she has a basis for building that outlook since so many events in the history of the US show a pattern by which whites have brutalized and minimized other races. And we as white Americans carry that legacy. But it isn’t ALL that we carry. I couldn’t help feeling as I read how Dr. Perry saw random people on her travels that she wouldn’t really be able to SEE white people who DO want to be part of a more diverse and equitable society when she did encounter them. Her book is all about what was and not what is or what will be. She is a talented writer and I would love to have read her beautiful prose giving more of a contemporary look at the south that is open to a different future.

Dr. Perry had a childhood filled with rich opportunities and experiences because of her well-educated and connected parents. She has been an educator and researcher in the bubble of an elite institution for her entire career. In the same way that children of Hollywood stars can’t truly see life like regular people, she can’t understand the life experience of most Southerners - especially poor rural Southerners. She doesn’t know that many rural pockets in the south are filled with generations of people who have not had the opportunities for education or travel that she has but they live beautiful lives focused on community and family and survival. They would likely be genuinely open to her in more ways than she might be to them.

[Rachel Allburn · Rating 2 out of 5]

Meandering travelogue, poorly executed. The author doesn’t even talk to most of the people she meets (and describes in painstaking detail). Rather, she details what they “likely” would have said had she asked. What’s the point then? “How the Word is Passed” is a far better attempt at this. Or, read any Isabel Wilkerson book.

[Teri · Rating 4 out of 5]

South to America is a somewhat raw look at the history and current state of the South through the lens of an African American historian and professor. Imani Perry grew up in Alabama, so she's a product of the South and knows the South. After moving away to the Northeast, she returns to her roots in the Deep South to consider just how integral these states are to America's history, culture, and society. The shaping of the United States began in the South, and much of our culture and society are built on the foundation of these lower states. The reader accompanies Perry as she visits key areas integral to the history of the South and the nation, discussing events that molded the attitudes and understanding of themes such as racism, feminism, politics, civil rights, and religion.

The book is structured into three parts: Origin Stories, The Solidified South, and Water People. Each chapter centers on a city or territory in the South and covers every state below the Mason-Dixon line from the East Coast to Texas, minus Arkansas (some may debate whether Arkansas is part of the South; I would include it). Perry begins her journey with the origin stories of the South, traveling through Appalachia, Virginia, Kentucky, Maryland, and Washington, D.C. She then moves to the Deep South, visiting Alabama, North Carolina, Atlanta, Birmingham, Nashville, Memphis, and the Black Belt. She concludes her visits with trips to areas along the coast, including the Low Country, Florida, Mobile, New Orleans, and then strays to the Bahamas and Cuba. Although the Bahamas and Cuba are not a part of the United States, their history has a marked presence in our own. She concludes her journey in Houston.

In each chapter, Perry situates key events that took place in those locations and how they affected attitudes and understanding of the area and the people who live there, as well as those not from the South, the transplants, and visitors. The events and chapters are not linear and are not always about "history," but rather about how each location shapes our thoughts and national perspective, particularly toward African Americans and Indigenous people. Each chapter can stand on its own or be viewed as a whole.

A very compelling and contemplative read.