Growing Up in the South

by Suzanne Jones (Editor)

Something about the South has inspired the imaginations of an extraordinary number of America’s best storytellers—and greatest writers. That quality may be a rich, unequivocal sense of place, a living connection with the past, or the contradictions and passions that endow this region with awesome beauty and equally awesome tragedy. The stories in this superb collection of modern Southern writing are about childhood, adolescence, and young adulthood—in other words, about growing up in the South. Flannery O’Connor’s “Everything That Rises Must Converge,” set in a South that remains segregated even after segregation is declared illegal, is the story of a white college student who chastises his mother for her prejudice against blacks. But black, white, aristocrat, or sharecropper, each of these 23 authors is unmistakably Southern—and their writing is indisputably wonderful.

Genres: Short Stories, Literature, Race, Fiction, Southern

544 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 2003

Reviews

[Elizabeth]

A readable combination of memoirs and fiction. Some works are complete in themselves, but many are excerpts from larger works. Jones makes a point of including both older works (Faulkner, for example) and recently published works. The main impression left by this volume is the extreme diversity of southern experience--differences between regions, between city to country within a region, between male and female, black and white. In many cases, it is not clear that the experience is really defined so much by its southern-ness as it is by some other variable.

[Spottswood]

A powerful anthology of modern southern literature. Ms. Jones introduced me to many writers I did not know.

[Margaret]

Marvelous collection of essays from preminent Southern writers about their experiences growing up in the "traditional" south. Perspectives vary: Maya Angelous, Eudora Welty, Bobby Ann Mason, Alice Walker, Harry Crewes, William Faulkner, and many more.

[Chelsea]

This book was required for a class but was worth reading just because.

[Corin]

Going on a "girl trip" in August to New Orleans!!!!This book is a great collection of short stories and excerpts by southern writers. A very eclectic mix.