"Even in a Place of Sorrow, Even in a Place of Joy": Intersections of Blackness and Southernness in the Works of bell hooks and Honorée Fanonne Jeffers

Abstract

bell hooks's Belonging: A Culture of Place (2009) and Honorée Fanonne Jeffers's The Love Songs of W. E. B. Du Bois (2021) exist at the intersection of southernness and Blackness, mapping the ways that the south can be a site of trauma and profound identification for the Black southerners who call it home. Both texts articulate the intense emotional experience that stems from returning to the south and offer alternative models for considering Black southern affects. These models challenge the white emotional paradigm—particularly its preoccupation with nostalgia—that dominates conversations about southern feelings. Situating these two texts within the current discourse surrounding monuments and memorials, this article highlights a non-linear engagement with history that prioritizes the felt aftermaths of slavery and the Jim Crow era in southern Black communities. In centering the complex, and often contradictory, affects that define the Black southern experience, both Belonging and The Love Songs of W. E. B. Du Bois articulate the felt forms through which Black southerners return to both the physical region and history of the south.