South to America: A Journey Below the Mason Dixon to Understand the Soul of a Nation

“There are so many birth dates: 1492, 1520, 1619, 1776, 1804, 1865, 1954, 1964, 1965. The result now, after centuries, is a fractured American people: children of the colonized, colonizers, enslaved, marginal, poor, wealthy, exploitative, White, Black, shades of brown, citizens, and fugitives running from the law. People with jobs but no papers, people with papers but no door or mattress. The American way is what has been bequeathed to us all in unequal measure.”

Perry’s introduction addresses the complicated nature of the US’s origins. Moreover, those origins are tied to the diverse and unequal nature of the modern nation-state. The descendants of those who were enslaved and the descendants of the Indigenous Americans whose land and people were colonized by Europeans live alongside the descendants of the colonizers. The very idea of America as a country is grounded in a foundation that is inherently unequal for those who live in the US.

“A South, at least imagined, without Blackness.”

Many Americans see Appalachia as a rugged, white utopia while also treating it with disdain because of its poverty. Appalachians face disparagement when they are called “white trash,” as if they were disposable. The region is romanticized through a racist lens yet simultaneously scorned.

“History orients us and magnifies our present circumstances.”

To understand the modern US, one must know its history, because it explains how the nation’s current political, social, cultural, and economic landscapes were shaped. Perry consistently links the historical circumstances that she explores to present-day issues, such as the tie between enslavement and today’s prisons in which incarcerated people, many of whom are Black, labor under similar conditions.