“Tell about the South,” Faulkner famously enjoined in Absalom, Absalom! “What’s it like there. “ is really the core of what the nation is,” she writes, “often the vanguard of where we are going as a country.” In it, Perry reexamines that characterization, complicating it and calling it into question by reminding us that good, bad, and indifferent, the South is the birthplace of much of what makes America America. That leaves the South as the “backward other,” observes Imani Perry in her provocative, perspective-shifting South to America: A Journey Below the Mason-Dixon to Understand the Soul of a Nation (Ecco), which won the 2022 National Book Award for nonfiction. With the exception of the South, American regions are often characterized as forward-leaning: The West and Midwest are wild frontiers of gritty innovation and expansionism the East and Northeast are fast-paced centers of culture, commerce, industry, and opportunity.
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