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border crossing narratives and the remaking of Southern identity
Millions of southerners left the South in the twentieth century in a mass migration that has, in many ways, rewoven the fabric of American society on cultural, political and economic levels. Because the movements of southerners, and people in general, are controlled not only by physical boundaries marked on a map but also by narratives that define movement, narrative is central in building and sustaining borders and in breaking them down. In Leaving the South: Border Crossing Narratives and the Remaking of Southern Identity, author Mary Weaks-Baxter analyzes narratives by and about those who left the South and how those narratives have remade what it means to be southern. Drawing from a broad range of narratives, including literature, newspaper articles, art and music, Weaks-Baxter outlines how these displacement narratives challenged concepts of southern nationhood and redefined southern identity. Close attention is paid to how depictions of the South, particularly in the media and popular culture, prompted southerners to leave the region and changed perceptions of southerners to outsiders as well as how southerners saw themselves. Through an examination of narrative, Weaks-Baxter reveals the profound effect gender, race and class have on the nature of the migrant's journey, the adjustment of the migrant and the ultimate decision of the migrant either to stay put or return home, and connects the history of border crossings to the issues being considered in today's national landscape.
Southern border formation narratives: controlling the flow of people -- The border crossing narrative and the disruption of Southern borders -- Securing the border as a creative site: Southern masculinities and the urge to tell -- Southern womanhood and "the high cost of living and dying in Dixie" -- Rescripting what it means to be Southern: musical performance as border narrative -- And then they drown: Faulkner's Quentin Compson lost in the borderlands -- "Anywhere south of the Canadian border."
Includes bibliographical references (pages 185-196) and index.