Southbound: Essays on Identity, Inheritance, and Social Change

Crux: The Georgia Series in Literary Nonfiction

by Anjali Enjeti

A move at age ten from a Detroit suburb to Chattanooga in 1984 thrusts Anjali Enjeti into what feels like a new world replete with Confederate flags, Bible verses, and whiteness. It is here that she learns how to get her bearings as a mixed-race brown girl in the Deep South and begins to understand how identity can inspire, inform, and shape a commitment to activism. Her own evolution is a bumpy one, and along the way Enjeti, racially targeted as a child, must wrestle with her own complicity in white supremacy and bigotry as an adult.

The twenty essays of her debut collection, Southbound, tackle white feminism at a national feminist organization, the early years of the AIDS epidemic in the South, voter suppression, gun violence and the gun sense movement, the whitewashing of southern literature, the 1982 racialized killing of Vincent Chin, social media’s role in political accountability, evangelical Christianity’s marriage to extremism, and the rise of nationalism worldwide.

In our current era of great political strife, this timely collection by Enjeti, a journalist and organizer, paves the way for a path forward, one where identity drives coalition-building and social change.

Genres: Nonfiction, Essays, Politics, Race, Memoir, History, Feminism

232 pages, Paperback

First published April 15, 2021

About the author

Anjali Enjeti is a former attorney, organizer, and award-winning journalist based near Atlanta. Her collection of essays, Southbound: Essays on Identity, Inheritance, and Social Change, and her debut novel The Parted Earth will be published in the spring of 2021.

Her writing about politics, social justice, and books has appeared in Harper’s BAZAAR, ZORA, Courier Newsroom, Mic, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Washington Post, Al Jazeera, The Nation, and elsewhere. Her work has received awards from the South Asian Journalists Association and the American Society of Journalists and Authors. A graduate of Duke University, Washington University School of Law, and the MFA program at Queens University in Charlotte, she teaches creative writing in the MFA program at Reinhardt University.

Since 2017, Anjali has been working to get out the vote in Georgia’s Asian American and Pacific Islander community. In 2019, she co-founded the Georgia chapter of They See Blue, an organization for South Asian Democrats. In the fall of 2020, she served on the Georgia Asian American and Pacific Islander Leadership Council for the Biden Harris campaign. A poll worker for Fulton County, she lives with her family outside of Atlanta.

Reviews

[Kiran Bhat · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Enjeti’s reflections are not only literary. They are also about the “very brown skin” of the woman on the cover. For Enjeti, it was one of the first times that she saw a South Asian face on the front of a book. It reminded her that she could be a part of media or representation, that she could consider beautiful or aspirational forms emerging from her background—not just an out-of-place brown body in a white classroom. That she need not be defined by the white gaze."

Please read the full length of my thoughts over at Ruminate Magazine: https://www.ruminatemagazine.com/blog...

[Dawn Major · Rating 5 out of 5]

"The problem with masks is that it’s very hard to see out of them.” I clung to these words while reading Southbound. The human mind attempts to find connections and for myself these particular words connected the entire collection thematically. Enjeit was referring the mask of silence here, specifically hiding behind a mask as a child who laughed off racist comments directed at her—a defense mechanism. Yet, those masks appear over and over in Southbound. What I believe Enjeti to be saying is that you don’t have to put on a literal mask like the white hoods the Ku Klux Klan members who shot five Black women in Chattanooga in 1980 wore in her essay, “Treatment.” There are all types of masks. In that same essay the mask assumes Southern Christian morality and righteousness hiding behind religion, preaching against homosexuality and calling AIDS a plague on gays. But the mask probably most familiar to us is the mask of silence. Simply ignoring injustice or remaining silent because I didn’t do it, or it doesn’t affect me personally is a single silence that multiply into another silence until there are thousands of little silences. That’s what resonated with me personally with Southbound because that’s the mask I have worn myself.

Some of Enjeti’s individual experiences really hit home for me. Enejti moved from the Midwest to Chattanooga, TN a few years before I moved from Missouri to Georgia. In her essay “Southbound,” she relates her experience of visiting Confederama, a tourist trap that featured dioramas of miniature Union and Confederate soldiers fighting at key battle sites for the Battle of Chattanooga. A young Enjeti comments on the weirdness of this place to her parents. I was instantly transported to my first experience of Southern weirdness the summer my family moved to Georgia and we visited Stone Mountain. This was the late 1980s. That night my family and I watched a laser show celebrating the big dogs of the Confederacy—Stonewall Jackson, Robert E. Lee, and Jefferson Davis—chiseled into the mountain and coming to life. Amongst fireworks, rebel yells, and adults waving Confederate flags screaming, “The South will rise again!” I had a similar experience to what Enjeti wrote about in her essay. I wondered if the laws were different here than the rest of the country. Was there a different government? And if they were rising again, now that I lived here would I have to be part of it? Enjeti states Confederama was “jarring for me as a young child” because of how “unapologetic, misinformed, and prevalent this celebration felt. It was if the South had won the Civil War, and the War had ended only yesterday.” I wanted to know more about this Confederama place that reminded me of Stone Mountain, so I searched for images and in the process, I discovered a 2015 post made by an individual who stated that, “Confederama, unfortunately, fell victim to political correctness and now exists farther up Lookout Mountain, I hear, in an altered and watered-down form…as I recall, there was a distinct Confederate bias. I remember thrilling to the tiny red flashes of guns being fired as a somber recording gave the history lesson.” Isn’t that weird? The terms “political correctness,” “watered down,” and “distinct Confederate bias” struck me now as an adult as not just being weird, but as being racist. I didn’t know this place with massive Confederate flags on the front of the building existed, but does it matter? While these places are less abundant in the South of 2021, I still see Confederate flags waving in the air in parts of Georgia and certainly the ideology is widespread, which is really the point of some of these essays.

I could go on and on about who would benefit from reading Southbound. Why not a few more? It’s for mothers, outsiders, immigrants, anyone who has been bullied, experienced chronic pain, has been discriminated against, or have felt a complete and utter sense of rage. “Anger Like Fire” is probably one of my favorite essays because no one has ever told me to be okay with my rage until now.

Southbound will upset you. It’ll enrage you. It’ll hurt. It also educates. It also speaks. If it doesn’t, please check for a pulse. It’s not necessary to read the essays in order, but if I hadn’t, it may not have been as clear to me how Enjeti’s early beginnings led to where she is now. Enjeti compellingly weaves personal accounts in with current events, statistics, research, and history. For me, it wasn’t the type of book I could read in one setting, or even two, three, or four settings. I decided on reading one essay in the morning and one in the evening to avoid imploding. That’s not to say I couldn’t stomach what Enejti was telling me, but I could only process the emotional rollercoaster Enjeti took me on in spells. With Southbound, Enjeti has seemingly left no stone unturned, no topic is off the table; her personal essays are powerhouses with a purpose.

Southbound is available for preorder: Southbound: Essays – Anjali Enjeti

This is a book for everyone, and everyone should be reading it. In response to the protests of 2020, daily tragedies of Black Americans being killed by law enforcement, and the Black Lives Matter Movement, many corporations and businesses saw the need for dialogue and have created diversity groups who engage employees of different ethnicities to discuss their experiences. They also have readings and book discussions. Enjeti’s essays would be an excellent starting point for companies to launch conversations between these groups. For future and current activists wishing someone would impart wisdom or give voice to the experience of volunteering, protesting, and campaigning for equality and social change, Southbound is waiting for you. There’s a great essay called “Armchair Activism” In the Real World” that addresses activism in the time of a pandemic for those saying I can’t. These essays are for teachers seeking diverse voices to educate and engage their students. For non-fiction writers, essayists, and memoirists contemplating structure and voice, Southbound acts as pseudo-guidebook in writing; it’s certainly a memoir on how Enjeti found her voice. For white readers wanting to understand otherness, racism, perspectives from people of color, these essays are a wonderful starting point. As a white person, you may find the essays to be an uncomfortable read. That’s okay. I can’t say I have all the same beliefs and political views as Enjeti, but that’s fine too. If you do feel discomfort, ask yourself why. It’s not a bad thing. You can still respect, value, and learn from Enjeti’s experiences.

[Marian · Rating 5 out of 5]

The capacious wisdom and honesty of this beautifully structured collection will stay with me for a long time. The author's range in subject and tone are impressive, yet the book achieves a rare unity for an essay collection, the mark of a mature and candid voice. With Enjeti, you're always in good hands.

She weaves together the personal and the political, family history with social and political history, intimate moments with a series of broader lenses that pull back to examine the self as situated in the concentric rings of community that hold us. She pulls no punches, not in laying out her incisive social and political critiques or in reflecting on the nature and consequences of personal failures. She critiques white supremacy to devastating effect, and in the essays on her political organizing in Georgia she also shows how we work toward dismantling it, one connection, one community at a time. A highly accomplished collection, moving, intelligent, and passionate.

[Renata · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sometimes I read a review of an upcoming book and place a hold on it at the library and forget about it, and then months later I get an arrived hold notice and I'm like "wait, what? Oh I guess this does sound like something I'd read..." It's like a surprise book of the month club that I run for myself.

Anywho, this was one of those, and I'm glad I did! Really engaging, thought-provoking and insightful essays. It was especially interesting for me to read about her work organizing voters in Georgia in 2018 and 2020.

[Juhi · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the essay collection I've always wanted! Anjali Enjeti speaks to the experience of being a politically-engaged South Asian woman in the South, and while I know a lot of them personally, we don't have a lot of representation so I've loved following her and her writing. This essay collection blends anecdotes from her life with the political context they happened in, from having a gay dentist during the height of the HIV/AIDS epidemic to seeing white feminism in action at a national women's organization to being a mother of school-age children at a time when school shootings are at an all-time high. Enjeti wrestles with tough questions and writes with clarity - I felt both at ease for being so seen and troubled by lingering questions of my own identity, inheritance, and engagement with social change.

[Angela · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow. . . I found Enjeti's essays to be at once confirming, enlightening, and convicting. I fist-pumped as she roared about 40-plus-year-old women growing into themselves and their rage in "Anger Like Fire;" I wept when she shared experiences of prejudice in "Southbound" and "Treatment." Throughout the essays, Enjeti weaves history and personal stories to elucidate greater truths. Overall, though, I was reminded that we all must do better by each other beginning with how we personally respond to injustice. For me, the collection is summed up by, " . . . we too must take responsibility for our relaxed complacency and intentional obliviousness . . . I too have much to learn and a long, long way to go."

[Kelli Oliver George · Rating 4 out of 5]

Luminous and introspective - Enjeti unpacks a lot here. I will be revisiting certain sections because there is so much to think about.

[Gita Swasti · Rating 4 out of 5]

During a time of political division, Enjeti, a journalist and community organizer shows how personal identity can bring people together and create change. She helped start the Georgia branch of They See Blue, a group for South Asian Democrats. Her work focuses on getting people to vote and is inspired by leaders like Stacey Abrams.

This book resists traditional form, weaving together memoir fragments, reportage, poetry, and non-linear threads as Enjeti reclaims her narrative on her own terms. At its heart lie two deceptively simple questions, "Who are you? Where are you from?

In "Treatment," Enjeti writes about her father, a doctor from Hyderabad. He faced racism but stayed strong and used that experience to motivate him. During the 1980s, he cared for gay AIDS patients in the Bible Belt—people who were pushed aside by society. Her essays show how she became aware of racism, sexism, and unfair systems, starting from when she was a child up to her recent work helping people vote in Georgia. The essay about Vincent Chin is especially powerful and important. Her activism has helped achieve many successes in Georgia. It shows the power of grassroots work and community organizing which makes up the last part of the book. It shows what being an activist means and how her father's quiet dedication to helping his community taught her how to love this country. Both essays connect different forms of systemic injustice in racism (experienced by the father and discussed through the Vincent Chin case), sexism, and institutional injustice.

This is a book that demands your attention if you've wrestled with who you are, if you've felt the weight of systems designed to exclude you, if you've questioned where you belong. Enjeti dissects it with surgical precision and showing what it means to be mixed race in a world that insists on neat categories. Her authentic power is connecting the personal wound to the systemic disease. When she describes racism as a dissection, as feeling conquered in her own body, requiring silence for survival so at the same time I feel that she moves from critique to action, documenting her grassroots organizing in Georgia, proving that change happens through persistent, unglamorous community work. She weaves intimate family history with political history, pulls back to show how we exist within concentric rings of community, then zooms in on personal failures with the same unflinching honesty she applies to white supremacy. What a beautiful read this year.

It will show you how to transform pain into purpose. It's brave enough to be both devastating critique and roadmap forward.

[Chris Miller · Rating 3 out of 5]

Anjali Enjeti's collection of political essays reveals that all politics are local, and that all stories have the ability to teach if well-written and concise. Though I don't know that we've ever crossed paths, the author and I live in the same Atlanta suburb and I first read her work in the Oxford American.

While we share geography and space on the political spectrum, I bristled when her words took on the imperative mood, and betrayed an intolerance for other viewpoints. Not all Republicans are racists, I wanted to write back -- some Republicans are racist, just like some Democrats. Many of our social flaws can be addressed by listening carefully to others, and responding not with indignation, but with compassion. We are born with two ears and one mouth, and my favorite axiom is that they should be used in that proportion.

I appreciated the judicious use of footnotes in Southbound: Essays on Identity, Inheritance, and Social Change. I also found irony in some essays' reliance on left-wing media sources, and Enjeti's intractable belief that truth can be found only in those sources. I pushed back against the belief that the media companies and government agencies she excoriates are newly-created with an evil intent. I think instead that racism and sensational journalism infect all eras of American history. Such outrages are not without precedent.

I most enjoyed the detailed personal histories relayed by Anjali Enjeti and the times at which she shared the stories of the oppressed immigrants in our community, and highlighted the individual victims of our societal ills.

[Shivani · Rating 5 out of 5]

*4.5 stars

I'm so glad I've expanded my reading to non-fiction because this book was phenomenal. I found Anjali's stories, experience, and historical contexts fascinating to learn about. I related to many of her essays and learned even more from each of them. I found her writing style a mixture of informative while still captivating which I have no idea how she managed to do, but it kept me engaged. I really liked that each essay was fairly short yet still packed a punch. I ended up tabbing so many moments and passages I want to go back to because as a South Asian woman I resonated with some of Anjali's experiences. She even voiced some of the fears that are buried deep in my brain. Of course, I'm not a Southerner, but I found out so much rich information and recommendations on BIPOC authors, judicial members, etc. all who I can support so I can too help amplify the voices of the BIPOC and AAPI communities. The essays covered topics all the way from what being biracial means when it comes to identity, voting suppression of marginalized voices in elections, and even how the South Asian communality needs to continue to grow out of their ideology of anti-Blackness and xenophobia. I'm so excited to pick up Enjeti's fiction work The Parted Earth after this because I know I'll love it just as much. As the blurb says on the book, every person needs to pick up this book, it's a must read.

[Brown Girl Bookshelf]

It's clear as day that Anjali Enjeti sees value in joyful and affirming Own Voices titles (readers, see chapter titled: "On the Unbearable Whiteness of Southern Literature"). Perhaps that's why she elevates so many other writers in the pages of her debut book. She recommends work that tiptoed off of her pages and into my reading list.

Enjeti represents multiple souths—South Asia, southern India, and the Deep South of the United States. She shifts from justifiably infuriated prose to heartfelt poems, first-person to third, and insights into action—all of which are influenced by a deep understanding of her identity and relationship with activism. I gathered Enjeti is a rock star from the early chapters of "Southbound." This feeling was further cemented when Enjeti shared that her criticism of Oprah's 1999 book club selection of "Mother of Pearl" landed her an invitation as a guest panelist on The Oprah Winfrey Show. Enjeti is, as Miki Kendall, the author of "Hood Feminism," would say, an "accomplice feminist." She actively challenges people, policies, institutions, and cultural norms that bring harm to Black and Brown people - both on the ground and by virtue of this book.

[Leigh · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read this book f you want to open your mind and understand why systems of oppression happen and how to overcome them. Anjali takes an honest look at herself and how the politics of the south shaped her.

It's difficult to get your head around the levels of racism and inequality she describes, but she also shares how she sought to change it. It's not easy, and it's certainly not immediate, but through self-examination and consistent work, all of us can become activists for positive social change.

I grew up in Atlanta, so much of what she describes in the book from the crimes against people of color to politics resonates very personally with me. But it's applicable to anyone who is frustrated with "the way things are" and wants to take an honest look at changing the world. A bit at a time. Like Anjali does.

Inspiring and also a difficult read bc it's never easy to face our own culpability, but this book is a must-read. Thank you, Anjali for your straightforward truth-telling and your generosity in sharing your experiences and insights.

[Shikha S. Lamba · Rating 4 out of 5]

Southbound is one of those books you didn’t know you needed to read till you’ve read it. Anjali Enjeti’s collection of essays are very personal despite being political which begs the question, in today’s day and age can we really separate the two?
Honest, intimate and compelling the book might challenge you and it will certainly open your eyes to a lot.
This book took me back to some of my life experiences and a thought that crossed my mind often while reading it was, that if I was in the same place at the same time as Anjali was while doing much of the activism she was doing - I would have joined her.
I loved how the author tied in happenings around the world with things happening on US soil - reverberating the belief that no matter where we live, we all are connected in today’s kind of world.
Definitely a must read for every American, and person living in the states .
A must read for anyone who despite not being American is still connected to issues such as Pro Choice, racism, bias, sexism etc… basically life!

Highly recommended.

[Emjay · Rating 3 out of 5]

Southbound is worth reading.

Enjeti raises poignant and pressing questions about what it means to exist in this time, in this place, as not just a woman, but a woman of color—and author, and mother, and feminist, and activist. As a native of the American southeast, I especially appreciated the early essays in the collection about moving to Tennessee as a child and all the pain and obstacles that came with it.

Straightforward and passionate, Enjeti challenges us to look at our systems of oppression head-on—and to never indulge in the lie that things are beyond saving.

[Brendan Ryan · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this. I don't think I've ever read a book about being from the Deep South from someone who wasn't white or Black, so that's a lot of why I chose this to read. A lot of the identity writing is really wonderful. I was more drawn to those essays, but I also found reading about political activism in the South Asian community interesting and enlightening.

[Deirdre Sugiuchi · Rating 5 out of 5]

Incredible exploration of the issues of the moment- including voter suppression, the killing of Vincent Chin, gun violence, the model minority myth, white Evangelical extremism- through the lens of a mixed race Brown, South Asian woman living in the deep South.

[Gary Peter · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautifully written and timely essays...required reading for anyone interested in understanding how identity is inextricably linked to our culture and politics. Anjali Enjeti, who is also a talented novelist, is a writer of considerable gifts.

[Dee · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a great read. A perfect primer on so many issues facing America today - racism, classism, controversial feminism, and disenfranchisement, to name a few. Not a be-all-end-all to be sure, but an interesting read with Enjeti’s unique perspective.

[Shamu Wilson · Rating 2 out of 5]

DNF @ 12%

I normally love books by and about South Asians exploring the Asian experience especially in the context of institutionalized racism, but this book was slow, a little boring, and I didn’t feel like the author was saying anything new.

[Gayatri Sethi Desi Book Aunty · Rating 5 out of 5]

Highly recommend:
This collection is timely, poignant and replete with insights we all need. Ideal for book clubs! Loads of honesty & actionable ideas.

[Debbie S]

Excellent essays on growing up as a woman of color in the South. This Atlanta author writes about race, identity, activism and recent political history. Highly recommend.

[Laura Sackton · Rating 3 out of 5]

At times I wanted a bit more from these essays, but overall a wonderful collection.

[Pernille · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5

[Abby Bruce]

I especially enjoyed the essays “alias” and “on the unbearable whiteness of southern literature”

[Shannon Yarbrough · Rating 5 out of 5]

A beautiful, necessary collection.

[Autumn · Rating 3 out of 5]

I struggle to review essay collections ...

[Alissa · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5

[Hena · Rating 4 out of 5]

Inspiring and informative. Ready for 4 more years of fighting.

[cocopuff · Rating 5 out of 5]

Telling everyone I know to read this!

[Krishna · Rating 2 out of 5]

Couldn't really get into this book even though I love reading books by South Asian authors who discuss identity/race. None of the short essays really stood out to me personally and didn't feel like the author was saying anything new.