{"title":"Down South","authors":"Jet Toomer","doi":"10.1353/scu.2024.a934718","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Abstract:</p><p>This personal essay uses narration to explore a northern descendant's direct connection to the legacy of the Great Migration though the lenses of her southern family's homelands, traditions, and family lineages. Memory and storytelling are the tools the author uses to weave through time and place, from her and her parents' youths through adulthoods, in both the North and South, to lay claim upon a heritage that has been erased, obfuscated, and undervalued chiefly because of systemic discrimination and secondarily because of intergenerational silences tied to racialized violence, poverty, and grief. With the intent to expand beyond the limitations of biased and incomplete accounts of Black histories, the prose therein culls through the author's memories and tethers them to those of her ancestors aiming to reconcile the dissonance between her northern upbringing and her southern roots.</p></p>","PeriodicalId":42657,"journal":{"name":"SOUTHERN CULTURES","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.4000,"publicationDate":"2024-08-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"SOUTHERN CULTURES","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1353/scu.2024.a934718","RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"HISTORY","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Abstract:
This personal essay uses narration to explore a northern descendant's direct connection to the legacy of the Great Migration though the lenses of her southern family's homelands, traditions, and family lineages. Memory and storytelling are the tools the author uses to weave through time and place, from her and her parents' youths through adulthoods, in both the North and South, to lay claim upon a heritage that has been erased, obfuscated, and undervalued chiefly because of systemic discrimination and secondarily because of intergenerational silences tied to racialized violence, poverty, and grief. With the intent to expand beyond the limitations of biased and incomplete accounts of Black histories, the prose therein culls through the author's memories and tethers them to those of her ancestors aiming to reconcile the dissonance between her northern upbringing and her southern roots.
期刊介绍:
In the foreword to the first issue of the The Southern Literary Journal, published in November 1968, founding editors Louis D. Rubin, Jr. and C. Hugh Holman outlined the journal"s objectives: "To study the significant body of southern writing, to try to understand its relationship to the South, to attempt through it to understand an interesting and often vexing region of the American Union, and to do this, as far as possible, with good humor, critical tact, and objectivity--these are the perhaps impossible goals to which The Southern Literary Journal is committed." Since then The Southern Literary Journal has published hundreds of essays by scholars of southern literature examining the works of southern writers and the ongoing development of southern culture.