Down South

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.