Realizing Our Place

Real Southern Women in a Mythologized Land
Erscheinungsjahr 2018
ISBN: 978-1-4968-1758-7
Verlag: University Press of Mississippi

Buch, Englisch, 208 Seiten, Hardback, Format (B × H): 160 mm x 236 mm, Gewicht: 590 g

What does it mean to be from somewhere? Does place seep into one's very being like roots making their way through rich soil, shaping a sense of self? In particular, what does it mean to be from a place with a storied past, one mythologized as the very best and worst of our nation? Such questions inspired Catherine Egley Waggoner and Laura Egley Taylor, sisters and Delta expatriates themselves, to embark on a trail of conversations through the Mississippi Delta. Meeting in evocative settings from kitchens and beauty parlors to screened-in porches with fifty-one women--black, Chinese, Lebanese, and white; elderly and young; rich and poor; bisexual and straight--the authors trace the extent to which the historical dimensions of southern womanhood like submissiveness, purity, piety, and domesticity are visible in contemporary Delta women's everyday enactments. Waggoner and Taylor argue that these women do not simply embrace or reject such dimensions, but instead creatively tweak stereotypes in such a way that skillfully legitimizes their authenticity.
Blending academic analysis with colorful excerpts of Delta women's words and including over one hundred striking photographs, Waggoner and Taylor provide an insightful peek into the lives of real southern women living in a deeply mythologized land.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Waggoner, Catherine Egley

Taylor, Laura Egley

Fachgebiete

• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Soziale Gruppen/Soziale Themen Gender Studies, Geschlechtersoziologie
• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Soziale Gruppen/Soziale Themen Gewalt und Diskriminierung: Soziale Aspekte
• Sozialwissenschaften Ethnologie | Volkskunde Volkskunde

Über Autor(innen)

Catherine Egley Waggoner, Springfield, Ohio, is associate professor and chair of communication at Wittenberg University. She is coauthor of Making Camp: Rhetorics of Transgression in U.S. Popular Culture and recipient of the Wittenberg's 2014 Alumni Association Award for Distinguished Teaching.

Laura Egley Taylor, Santa Fe, New Mexico, is the Miller Omega Design Coordinator at the Santa Fe Institute, where she runs SFI Press and works to visually interpret complexity science to the general public. She was art director of the award-winning natural parenting magazine Mothering until 2011.