Academic seeks to reframe South
“Every other region can jam its fingers in its ears and shake its head and tunelessly chant, ‘Not in my backyard,’ but not so the South,” ZZ Packer observes in her introduction to the 2008 edition of “New Stories From the South.” “The South is the backyard . ... The truth is that every awful and beautiful thing that has happened in America happened in the South first.”
The quest to understand this region drives Imani Perry’s engrossing if erratic “South to America.” A professor of African American Studies at Princeton University, Perry picks up Packer’s gauntlet, seeking to carve away the South’s hoary myths and metaphors. She frames her investigation as a travelogue, moving from Appalachia to the Upper South to the Deep South to outliers like Florida and Cuba.
The book’s pleasures are many. Perry shines when she’s present in the narrative, an archaeologist troweling through strata of history and culture. Her vignettes spark off the page: brutal race riots in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and Wilmington, North Carolina; historically Black colleges; Charles Chesnutt’s conjure tales; a famous group of backup musicians known as “The Swampers”; brilliant analyses of Southern colloquialisms and tonalities.
There’s even a sidebar on grits! Her personal interactions are affecting, particularly with White Others: a Confederate reenactor at Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, say, or a Lyft driver in Virginia.
Unfortunately, these evocative moments are overwhelmed by a strident op-ed voice, ginned up by conjecture (too many “mays,” “mights” and “seems”) and a stream-of-consciousness delivery. “South to
America” is, at best, an impressionistic overview of this inscrutably complex region. Perry tosses off obligatory lines about revered figures such as Dolly Parton (good), Flannery O’Connor (bad) and Thomas Jefferson (very bad); but evangelical churches, SEC football and Rotary Club luncheons don’t ping her radar.
Although Alabamaborn, Perry left the region at age 5. In this sense, she’s more South-adjacent than a bona fide Southerner. “South to America” is an immersive read, but in the end, it’s blinkered by a failure, to illuminate the homeland for those of us born and raised there, and who crave a deeper wisdom and clarity among the scorching contradictions. Ever Sphinx-like, the South has once again eluded a writer’s penetrating gaze. — Hamilton Cain, Minneapolis Star Tribune
Valerie Bertinelli has been in the public eye
for going on a half-century. She exploded onto the scene in 1975, delighting television audiences as teenager Barbara Cooper in the pioneering sitcom “One Day at a Time.” Bertinelli has since starred in other hit shows (“Hot in Cleveland” and “Touched by an Angel”), hosted an
Emmy Award-winning Food Network program and written multiple bestselling books. Not to mention she was married to the late rocker Eddie Van Halen. Bertinelli the author has returned with “Enough Already: Learning to Love the Way I Am Today,” equal parts selfhelp, cookbook and tell-all.
But “Enough Already,” which provides constructive advice and sprinkles in the occasional recipe, isn’t just about weight loss and culinary delights from the former Jenny Craig spokesperson. It’s about acceptance, empowerment and overcoming hardships, including the loss of a loved one. And it’s that last piece where Bertinelli’s book really hits the mark.
She is brutally honest — almost uncomfortably so — in describing her relationship with Van Halen, the famed guitarist who died in 2020 after a lengthy cancer fight, as well as with her late parents.
“I have gone back and forth about whether I am revealing too much and being too open,” Bertinelli writes, coming to the conclusion that “sharing makes us feel less alone during the hardest of times.” It also makes for a compelling read.