This book took me all over the place. As a southerner, I felt a little defensive of the area where I’ve lived for most of my life. Though from Alabama, Perry’s point of view is clearly northeastern (especially when describing border states), and there’s a long history of northeasterners (i.e., Yankees) stereotyping southerners. As a software developer, I found that she overlooked the “New South” almost entirely. The research triangle in North Carolina was only described as tobacco road, a remnant of slavery. Atlanta’s IBM was never mentioned. These are serious gaps, and Perry’s lack of an objective method seemed to provide easy fodder for criticism.
And it’s easy to get down while reading this work. She covers the hard topic of race, and when in the weeds, it’s easy to construct straw men. However, I’m very sympathetic to her case. Unlike in her travels to the American South, I don’t, as a privileged white male, have to put up with the competitive mistrust of lower-class southern white folk. As much as I would like to defend the South, I consistently find myself appalled by our political representatives in Washington. According to the news, ignorance seems to be the oil that lubricates our society. Her account reflects this characteristic deeply. I yearn for a respectable white voice to side with her plight to show that our society is not irredeemably cracked, but this account leaves me basically empty-handed. Is this due to her lack of an objective method to balance her subjective tendencies? Perhaps, but I suspect it also has to do with my own willing ignorance of my fellow southern citizens.
Her writing will spur many thoughts in any attentive reader – a trait that conveys this book’s greatest strengths. Ultimately, I’ve decided to laud and praise this book for that effect. It provokes. It prods and pokes in uncomfortable ways. It pushes the boundaries. Perhaps it overreaches a few times, but how can it achieve its intended goal without risking such? The South has been a fulcrum of American politics since Nixon’s southern strategy in the 1970s. Its unresolved contradictions have become America’s contradictions as Perry makes clear.
In the end, this book needs more balance. It needs some hope, not just incitement. It needs more beneficent figures, not just tragic figures who live despite the oppression. It needs a few instances of deep racial healing that the South has undergone. (Yes, this phenomenon exists. Look at Charleston, SC, after the tragedy at Mother Emmanuel. Look at how people hugged in the streets.) If the South is a prism to understand America as Perry contends, we need to see that goodness more in this land of hope and dreams. My experiences convince me that it’s there in the South and in America, and we need it to be amplified.
South to America: A Journey Below the Mason-Dixon to Understand the Soul of a Nation
By Imani Perry
Copyright (c) 2022
HarperAudio
ASIN B08S7V112F
Length: 16:32
Genre: American History
www.amazon.com