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I Don't Hate the South: Reflections on Faulkner, Family, and the South
I Don't Hate The South takes its title from the famous declaration by Faulkner's character Quentin Compson in the novel Absalom, Absalom! . The book traces Baker's own ambivalent relationship to the South and its various protocols of family and black expressive cultural independence through a memoiristic recounting of the author's various academic posts, family dramas, travels, and engagements with that most famous of southern authors, William Faulkner as well as the black expressive "experimentalists" Percival Everett and Ralph Ellison. I Don't Hate The South 's central claim is that the South is a laboratory, metaphor, and proving ground for American polity as a whole. W. E. B. Du Bois "As the South goes, so goes the nation!" Houston Baker sets out to show the present-day wisdom of Du Bois's observation in a post-Hurricane Katrina moment of national family crisis. With incisive wit, scrupulous literary and cultural analysis, and vivid portraits of members of his own
family, the author provides captivating reading and an object lesson on the United States' regional and national interdependence.
family, the author provides captivating reading and an object lesson on the United States' regional and national interdependence.
216 pages, Paperback
First published August 6, 2007
About the author
Houston A. Baker Jr.
72 books22 followersHouston A. Baker is Distinguished University Professor and a professor of English at Vanderbilt University. He has been awarded fellowships by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities and has been a resident fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences and the National Humanities Center. He has served as president of the Modern Language Association and as editor of the journal American Literature.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
November 1, 2013
"I Don't Hate the South: Reflections on Faulkner, Family, and the South" is a memoir, literary theory, and cultural history, in which the American South serves as a reflection of America. It is not a study of Faulkner but rather a literary history that includes Faulkner, but from a very specific point of view. I went into the book because I thought it would be a study of Faulkner and, while I was disappointed for a bit when i realized it wasn't, I was equally excited by what it was.
In Faulkner's "Abasalom, Absalom!," Quentin Compson tell the story of Thomas Sutpen to his Harvard roommate, Shreve. At the end of his telling, Shreve asks Quentin why he hates the South so much and Quentin replies with "I don't hate the South. I don't hate the South." That incredibly complex ambivalence is the source of this study and the personal intensity with which Houston A Baker, Jr.looks at his life vis-a-vis that statement if impressive, both in an intellectual and emotional realm.
Baker was born in Kentucky to highly educated African American parents who worked tirelessly to ensure that their children would be as educated. Mostly, though, he focuses on his relationship to his father. Early in the book, Baker tells a story about his prancing around the room when his father, disgusted that Baker was being too effeminate, slapped him. Baker understands the meanings of this slap, the aversion to femininity in his son and the reasons for that, but his understanding goes way beyond that and the meanings continue to unfold throughout the book, all the way to its smart and compelling ending.
Along the way, we get studies of W.E.B. Du Bois, Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison, Jean Toomer, and Faulker, among others. We get a bit of the history of Black Studies. And an analysis contemporary racial politics/culture. As the book moves along, Baker's intellectual analysis leads to his making sense of his own life in a rather spectacular way. I respond to it so strongly partly because of what I learn about the books and the writers in Baker's study but even more because baker uses all this knowledge to make sense of an shape his own life. He uses what he's learned from art to determine how to live; he gathers up that wisdom and uses it to guide his life.
The memoir parts of this book compel me but the literary analysis is equally fascinating to me. While I know the books he was studying very well, I found his analysis surprising and convincing. Baker's reading of "Light In August" came as a complete shock to me. I'd always seen that novel as a critique of America's construction of race while Baker sees it a failure to understand how a Black person thinks about his/her own racial identity. Reading Baker's analysis didn't make me shake off the meaning I'd already created of that novel but it does complicate it. His analysis of "Invisible Man" and of Ralph Ellison are scathing - another surprise and a compelling one.
His cultural study is equally fascinating. Thinking about why African American communities in the north ended up being so dysfunctional, he reminds us of the facts that Blacks who came north came damaged. And his study of the racial politics of the South, while a story we think we already know, is pushed beyond where most of us have stopped.
In the final section of the book, Baker urns exclusively to his own family and his relationship to to his son. It's a continuation of the story of his relationship to his father's. This story and its ancillary analysis are not the facile one you'd get in a self help book, though. It's challenging and eye opening, just like the rest of the book. It's a rare combination of intellect and feeling. And, of course, it's all tied to South, because Baker is thorough and his study has incredible integrity.
In Faulkner's "Abasalom, Absalom!," Quentin Compson tell the story of Thomas Sutpen to his Harvard roommate, Shreve. At the end of his telling, Shreve asks Quentin why he hates the South so much and Quentin replies with "I don't hate the South. I don't hate the South." That incredibly complex ambivalence is the source of this study and the personal intensity with which Houston A Baker, Jr.looks at his life vis-a-vis that statement if impressive, both in an intellectual and emotional realm.
Baker was born in Kentucky to highly educated African American parents who worked tirelessly to ensure that their children would be as educated. Mostly, though, he focuses on his relationship to his father. Early in the book, Baker tells a story about his prancing around the room when his father, disgusted that Baker was being too effeminate, slapped him. Baker understands the meanings of this slap, the aversion to femininity in his son and the reasons for that, but his understanding goes way beyond that and the meanings continue to unfold throughout the book, all the way to its smart and compelling ending.
Along the way, we get studies of W.E.B. Du Bois, Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison, Jean Toomer, and Faulker, among others. We get a bit of the history of Black Studies. And an analysis contemporary racial politics/culture. As the book moves along, Baker's intellectual analysis leads to his making sense of his own life in a rather spectacular way. I respond to it so strongly partly because of what I learn about the books and the writers in Baker's study but even more because baker uses all this knowledge to make sense of an shape his own life. He uses what he's learned from art to determine how to live; he gathers up that wisdom and uses it to guide his life.
The memoir parts of this book compel me but the literary analysis is equally fascinating to me. While I know the books he was studying very well, I found his analysis surprising and convincing. Baker's reading of "Light In August" came as a complete shock to me. I'd always seen that novel as a critique of America's construction of race while Baker sees it a failure to understand how a Black person thinks about his/her own racial identity. Reading Baker's analysis didn't make me shake off the meaning I'd already created of that novel but it does complicate it. His analysis of "Invisible Man" and of Ralph Ellison are scathing - another surprise and a compelling one.
His cultural study is equally fascinating. Thinking about why African American communities in the north ended up being so dysfunctional, he reminds us of the facts that Blacks who came north came damaged. And his study of the racial politics of the South, while a story we think we already know, is pushed beyond where most of us have stopped.
In the final section of the book, Baker urns exclusively to his own family and his relationship to to his son. It's a continuation of the story of his relationship to his father's. This story and its ancillary analysis are not the facile one you'd get in a self help book, though. It's challenging and eye opening, just like the rest of the book. It's a rare combination of intellect and feeling. And, of course, it's all tied to South, because Baker is thorough and his study has incredible integrity.
July 31, 2008
Didn't get too far into this one as it had much less to do with Faulkner than I'd hoped. I wanted a kindred Faulkner soul to guide me on his personal journey with the tragic Southern characters, thereby giving me further insight and laying down a path that I might follow to greater understanding. This is not that book, so I'll have to keep looking.
April 13, 2015
Very challenging account of Southern blackness as it relates to regional, American, and global economic participation.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews