A New York Times Books New & Noteworthy book - A Most-Anticipated Book
from BookPage, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, and Paperback Paris -
Glowing reviews and features in Garden & Gun, CNN Philippines,
Chapter16, Kirkus Reviews, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, and more
This fierce collection celebrates the incredible diversity in the
contemporary South by featuring essays by twenty-one of the finest young
writers of color living and working in the region today, who all address
a central question: Who is welcome?
Kiese Laymon navigates the racial politics of publishing while recording
his audiobook in Mississippi. Regina Bradley moves to Indiana and
grapples with a landscape devoid of her Southern cultural touchstones,
like Popeyes and OutKast. Aruni Kashyap apartment hunts in Athens and
encounters a minefield of invasive questions. Frederick McKindra delves
into the particularly Southern history of Beyonce's black majorettes.
Assembled by editor and essayist Cinelle Barnes, essays in A Measure of
Belonging: Twenty-One Writers of Color on the New American South
acknowledge that from the DMV to the college basketball court to
doctors' offices, there are no shortage of places of tension in the
American South. Urgent, necessary, funny, and poignant, these essays
from new and established voices confront the complexities of the South's
relationship with race, uncovering the particular difficulties and
profound joys of being a Southerner in the 21st century.
