Dixie Land as we know it is being slowly and unceremoniously demolished. Piece by piece, urbanization, immigration, and religious erosion collectively dismantle the traditional properties that made the South such a special region . . . or so the popular rhetoric would have you believe.
Of course, the “Dixie Land as we know it” never truly existed and results from revisionary spins on the South’s history, these filtered through magnolia-colored lenses. In The New Mind of the South, recently released in paperback, journalist Tracy Thompson attempts to sift through the mythologies and romantic notions surrounding the South’s identity. She explores how the South functions, not in opposition to a dominant culture, but as a piece of an American puzzle.
Thompson cites Carl Deglar’s notion of the “two-ness of Southerners”—the pride one feels in the South as a home and the shame associated with the region’s quarrelsome history—as a driving motivation for her exploration. Born in Atlanta, but having spent her most recent years in Washington, D.C., Thompson eagerly excavates what she can about her own identity and that of her friends and family.
Early in the work, Thompson notes that the South’s history is so ill-defined precisely because “we all agreed not to talk about it.” If Thompson has one mission in her study, she hopes to promote a more open discourse—to talk about it. It makes sense, then, that Thompson makes her work very conversational. She often incorporates anecdotes from her own experiences to flesh out larger concepts.
This is not to say that Thompson relies solely on narratives to drive her ideas. She cites plenty of statistical data, but eschewing pedantic academic theories and cumbersome data creates an atmosphere of dialogue, rather than lecture.
As with most discussions of Southern identity and history, the conversation quickly lands on controversial and incendiary topics—racism, xenophobia, and an inherent guilt that historian C. Vann Woodward dubbed “the burden of Southern history.” Rather than shying from these subjects, Thompson revels in her opportunity to deconstruct and examine how and why the South promulgated such absurd notions. She also examines how they are evolving in an increasingly integrated and connected society.
Thompson devotes each chapter to the exploration of a subject currently shaping the South. Chapters on racial politics and revisions of Civil War history will not surprise anyone with the barest knowledge of the South, but chapters on Hispanic immigration and religious fundamentalism best achieve their missions. Thompson offers thoughtful and evenhanded explorations of these potentially thorny subjects. Case studies of Asheboro, North Carolina, and World Changers Church International draw from statistics and personal portraits. She intertwines her own anecdotes with copious interviews from preachers, reformers, Daughters of the Confederacy, historians (self-appointed and university ordained), and all shades of people in between, making her ideas personal and accessible.
If Thompson attempts to speak for a new Southern mindset, then surely she reacts to an antiquated one. Surprisingly, she seems less concerned with W.J. Cash’s landmark 1941 work The Mind of the South than with the revolutionary, if misguided, I’ll Take My Stand: The South and the Agrarian Tradition, the 1930 work of a group of Vanderbilt scholars and poets collectively known as the Agrarians.
Thompson disputes one particularly longstanding notion of Southern culture, a love of the land. Thompson finds the Southern obsession with soil remains with us, even as Southerners move towards a neo-agrarianism built less on the romantic notions of leisure and more on a genuine desire to revive a tired, polluted landscape. Think Wendell Berry, not the Agrarians.
The author also explores the Southern ideas of family and community. Thompson writes, “This is a feature of agrarian life in all societies, but since the South remained insular and agrarian longer than any other region of the country, it has Southern associations.” She then deconstructs the idea of community, at least as the Agrarians conceptualized it, to argue that race and agriculture shaped community more than other forces.
For all of its high points, the book also shows weaknesses. Like a magnet to a pile of iron shavings, Thompson’s hometown of Atlanta constantly tugs at her attention. For this reader, The New Mind of the South suffers from a topophilic obsession with Atlanta, for all the mythologizing and explaining she puts into the Southern landscape.
“Suffers” may be too strong a word, though. Certainly, Thompson’s final chapter, focused solely on Atlanta, offers a fascinating case study in the evolution of a metropolitan Southern landscape. That being said, readers with no investment in the city may wish for broader landscapes. Louisiana, Arkansas, and Kentucky receive only passing mention in this book.
With ongoing, often divisive, debates over immigration reform, textbook deficiencies, and racial politics, Thompson’s study proves an invaluable companion piece for those attempting to understand how the South has revised and re-envisioned its narrative throughout the 20th century.
By joining a conversation started almost a hundred years ago by the Agrarians, Thompson adds her name to a roster that includes John Shelton Reed, C. Vann Woodward, Karen L. Cox, and other titans in the field of Southern studies.
Even so, this book is by no means the final word on the South, nor should it be. As a document of current Southern ideas, The New Mind of the South feels like essential reading. The work’s deeply, sometimes overly, personal approach … and its occasional flaws … mirror those of the South.
Jim Coby is a Ph.D. candidate in English at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. His research revolves around the literature of the American South and trauma.