"This is the book all of us Mississippi writers, dead and alive, need
to read. It is indeed a strange but glorious sensation to see your
literary and geographic lineage so beautifully and rigorously explored
and valued as it's still being created." --Kiese Laymon, author of
Heavy: An American Memoir
The South has produced some of America's most celebrated authors, and no
state more so than Mississippi. Names as diverse as Faulkner, Welty, and
Ward have created a literary legacy spanning decades and stretching
across lines of class, gender, and race. One thing binds together these
wide- ranging perspectives--the land itself. In A Place Like
Mississippi, W. Ralph Eubanks explores those ties and the ways in which
the Magnolia State has fostered such a bounty of expression.
The stories haven't always been easy to tell; even beautiful landscapes
can't obscure a complicated history. The state's African American
writers have long recounted the fight for equality, forming a lineage of
powerful Black voices that continue to speak with urgency in our
tumultuous times. Yet underlying those truths is also a deep affection
for Mississippi's places.
With the love of a native son, Eubanks pays tribute to the inspiration
that can come from the lay of the land, proving that a journey through
one state's literary terrain can help us better understand America as a
whole
