Welfare Queen (2012), listed in the catalogue as hailing from “a private East Coast collector,” was consigned by Imani Perry, the Hughes-Rogers Professor of African American Studies at Princeton University. With uncommon insight and breathtaking clarity, South to America offers an assertion that if we want to build a more humane future for the United States, we must center our concern below the Mason-Dixon Line.This past Wednesday, November 17, a regal portrait by the celebrated artist Amy Sherald sold for $3.9 million, double its $1.2 million-to-$1.8 million estimate, in the 20th-century and contemporary evening sale at Phillips New York. Weaving together stories of immigrant communities, contemporary artists, exploitative opportunists, enslaved peoples, unsung heroes, her own ancestors, and her lived experiences, Imani Perry crafts a tapestry unlike any other. She renders Southerners from all walks of life with sensitivity and honesty, sharing her thoughts about a troubling history and the ritual humiliations and joys that characterize so much of Southern life. Her journey is full of detours, deep dives, and surprising encounters with places and people. This is the story of a Black woman and native Alabaman returning to the region she has always called home and considering it with fresh eyes. In South to America, Imani Perry shows that the meaning of American is inextricably linked with the South, and that our understanding of its history and culture is the key to understanding the nation as a whole. Even those who have never lived there can rattle off a list of signifiers: the Civil War, Gone with the Wind, the Ku Klux Klan, plantations, football, Jim Crow, slavery. But the idiosyncrasies, dispositions, and habits of the region are stranger and more complex than much of the country tends to acknowledge.

An inspiration.” -Isabel WilkersonĪn essential, surprising journey through the history, rituals, and landscapes of the American South-and a revelatory argument for why you must understand the South in order to understand America “An elegant meditation on the complexities of the American South-and thus of America-by an esteemed daughter of the South and one of the great intellectuals of our time. WINNER OF THE 2022 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FOR NONFICTION

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