Blue notes, flourishes, unexpected transitions, and juxtapositions of times, people, and places are held together by the nightmares and dreams of what America has always been and never been.
It starts with a dance, the French Quadrille, and it reads like jazz. In Murray’s book, the fellow Alabama native and cultural critic explores what Perry calls “the changing same, the things that were old and the things that were the same and the relationship between the two.” Inspired by Murray’s subject and form and the works of a great lineage of writers and artists Perry finds most inspiring, South to America takes an experimental approach. In that article and even more so in her book, Albert Murray’s 1971 South to a Very Old Place serves as a guide. A seed of it can be seen in her 2018 Harper’s Magazine article As Goes the South, So Goes the Nation, exploring the ways the past and present blur in her home state of Alabama.
To get a sense of America - not just the United States, because her scope enfolds a south beyond this nation’s southernmost boundary - with all its contrasts of beauty and horror, Perry insists one needs to look south.
Other times it chills you with patterns of human cruelty. Sometimes the book oozes with the warmth of creativity, resistance, and possibility. South to America invites the reader into Perry’s many journeys South to feel the layered social, political, economic, environmental, and religious climates therein. Even so, no matter the miles, the passage of time, or the deep flaws, the South will always be home. She is quick to point out that though it's tempting to call her sentiment nostalgia, the melancholy she feels is born out of love for a place that she knows, like all places, is constantly changing. “It is such an intense pride,” Perry admits, “that I think it actually irritates some people because I feel like it is just this incredible legacy of imagination and beauty and resilience, and it is such a huge part of how I identify the things that I most value about myself.” She calls herself an exile from a place that conjures immense pride and critique. Perry has spent more seasons away than in the place of her birth, Birmingham, but she regularly returns South in body and mind.
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