South to America, Imani Perry
South to America, Imani Perry
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South to America
A Journey Below the Mason-Dixon to Understand the Soul of a Nation

Bestseller

Author: Imani Perry

Narrator: Imani Perry

Unabridged: 16 hr 32 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: HarperAudio

Published: 01/25/2022


Synopsis

“An elegant meditation on the complexities of the American South—and thus of America—by an esteemed daughter of the South and one of the great intellectuals of our time. An inspiration.” —Isabel Wilkerson, New York Times bestselling author of The Warmth of Other Suns and Caste: The Origins of Our DiscontentsAn 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 AmericaWe 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.  

About Imani Perry

Imani Perry is the National Book Award–winning author of South to America, as well as seven other books of nonfiction. She is the Henry A. Morss Jr. and Elisabeth W. Morss Professor of Studies of Women, Gender, and Sexuality and of African and African American Studies at Harvard University, and is a 2023 MacArthur Fellow. Perry lives between Philadelphia and Cambridge with her two sons.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Traci

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 maste......more

Goodreads review by Raymond

"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 w......more

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 bo......more

Goodreads review by David

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. Thi......more