Recommend some good books (fiction or nonfiction) about the South to me

my poetry desu

Thank you.

Idk a damn thing about the actual south, and the furthest south I've been outside of Disneyland was Denver but Norwood satisfied my Yank imagination the best.

The racism is weirder, trees are everywhere, the hillbillies with smartphones look anachronistic, kudzu devours the hills, statues are being pulled down, the bbq is better, property is cheap, its hot as shit and super humid, the sub-accents are very different, everyone is 'half-cherokee'

t. georgian

obviously read mark twain and william faulkner books

you mean t. atlantan
damn liberal hippies gtfo of muh deep south

Child of god

Nah, I'm the grandson of a preacher and my dad had a confederate flag tattoo
also, I'm 1/8 cherokee

It's really mediocre just all across the board. Stuff about "southern culture/heritage" is bs, they're just unremarkable and kind of racist people

t. hasn't actually been to the south

How has no one mentioned Gone With the Wind yet? Or Uncle Tom's Cabin?

Im not even southern (from north west) but southern culture is way more authentic form of culture than northern "cultures".

All traditional cultures appear backward and racist. The left has just glorified traditional people in Africa or Asia, while despising traditional Europeans or Americans.

It is only the liberal democratic societies that egalitarian anti-religious ideas are the norm.

>had
Why'd he get it removed?

papa died

Henry Mayer, ALL ON FIRE: William Lloyd Garrison and the Abolition of Slavery

Although I am posting it in this thread with ironic intent it is unironically an excellent book.

North Floridafag here,
I've lived in the south my whole life. Southern culture is aristocratic and feudalist. It's more European than American. It's not what I'd call civilized, unless you think capping the country's productivity, technological growth development of culture, at the expense of fancy clothes and titles of nobility, oh yeah, and owning people. There's nothing here but gas stations ever few miles and Walmarts. There are more closed businesses than open ones. Culture? Civil war reenactments and bonfires. Jobs? Walmart and gas stations? Everyone's on welfare and always bitching. You're not missing much.

Uncle Tom's Cabin has little literary worth. It was an overly sentimental novel that was intended to fan the flames of abolitionism with the tears of white northern women. Not saying not to read it, but its only real interest in its political context.

Flannery O'Connor, especially "A Good Man is Hard to Find", "The River", and "Good Country People"

You excise it from that racist faggot corpse?

>Flannery O'Connor
this. My 11th grade English teacher was a big fan of her. "A Good Man is Hard to Find" was the first I read by her and it was definitely thought provoking.
Jacksonville here. Driving south to Stark and Waldo is so depressing. Something that I've noticed that seems out of place is the cars. It's not uncommon to see some hick trailer home with 3 brand new lifted trucks out front.

nah, he got 'born to lose' tattoo'd over it when he got less racist

thats actually pretty funny

souther gothic
>Absalom absalom
>as i lay dying

The Heart is A Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers

I'm not sure why I said that about your father. I was trying too hard to be edgy and funny, I guess. I feel quite bad about it. I'm sorry, user.

That shit drives me up a wall. Everybody's "Scots-Irish," around March too. My dumbass cousin wore this stupid Irish Pride hat for like 3 years until he did a genealogy report for school and found out we have pretty much been unbroken English for the last 200 years.

Aside from one of my Uncles who married a squaw out West and then was shot and hanged as a thief and assassin. Apparently the cattle stealing was tolerable, but shooting a man for $15 was not.

It's okay, bud. we're all edgy every once in a while. It's Veeky Forums. I wouldn't have shared if I was especially sensitive, but I do appreciate the sentiment (of the apology, the edginess needed some honing)

>carson mccullers
>william faulkner
>cormac mccarthy
To name the obvious. There is a lot of potential in the genre as there are a lot of more liberal/artsy cities which could foster such a movement. My writing could be considered southern gothic, but Im not originally from the south. My observations of southern culture/atmosphere/archetypes are those of an outsider. I would really love to see a local literary movement in my lifetime.

Scots-Irish is actually the most common ethnicity in the USA though.

Isn't McCarthy from Texas, though? Texas is a little... different.

Wait a minute, I'm checking his bio. McCarthy's from fucking Rhode Island. How'd he wind up as a Southern writer?

>the second largest state is one thing
He was raised in Rhode Island and moved to El Paso. El Paso is practically New Mexico.

>Everybody's "Scots-Irish," around March too
That means they're Ulstermen. Ulster-Scots, people from Scotland that colonized Ireland in the 16th and 17th centuries, not actual Irish paddies. I should know, that's my ancestry, and I'm Presbyterian to boot. I live in the foothills of North Carolina where everyone is either of Ulster-Scot or German descent. Unfortunately because people see the "irish" in the name they think they're actually Irish. Shame people don't really know their own ancestry anymore.

>tfw people think you're Irish because your last name is Blake
>Not because of the poet, but because of some shitty romance movie
My father's side goes back to colonial SC and were Tories, English as fuck. My mother's is German mixed in with some other shit.
Also
>missing the point of the post
You haven't noticed people claiming to be Irish around St. Patrick's day? All the dumb yahoos who buy overpriced leather bracelets with Celtic knotwork, die their hair green and talk about how their 3rd cousin on their mother's side has red hair, which makes them as Irish as some Mick family in Boston?

It's the same shit with the Cherokee thing, which was the point of my earlier post. It's aggravating, they're not either.

Where at in the foothills btw? I live out near Charlotte, little town called Mount Holly.
>the other half of El Paso is Juarez but we pretend their 2 seperate cities
It's practically Mexico m8.

T. Lived in Las Crucses.

Harry Crews. Start with Feast of Snakes.

Early McCarthy
Faulkner
Twain
Deliverance
For something less obvious try Breece D’j Pancake

Nobody mentioned Tennessee Williams yet.

the entire Faulkner corpus

Really? Nobody? "To Kill a Mockingbird" it's been raped pretty hard by high school English classes, but it's still a great book.

Redneck Ibsen (which is a good thing)

>I live out near Charlotte, little town called Mount Holly
Small world. I live outside of Hickory.

The Redneck Manifesto by Jim Goad

Im not arguing its great or a culture to aspire to, but that it is roughly an equivalent form to the cultures all the NatGeo journalists get wet about. Its a legit tradition and way of life.

Brighton Rock - Graham Green
One of the best

No shit wow. I never run into Carolinians on here outside of asshat Ashevillians.

No, German is by far.

Faulkner, especially light in august and the sound and the fury.
Flannery o'connor is in my opinion the writer who is the most apt in creating a story around southern values.

their eyes were watching god
All the Kings Men
Daisy Miller