Malinda Maynor Lowery

Malinda Maynor Lowery is a member of the Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina; she was born in Robeson County, NC but raised in Durham. She is a historian and documentary film producer who now lives in Durham with her daughter Lydia. She is an Associate Professor of History at UNC-Chapel Hill and Director of the Southern Oral History Program. Her first book, Lumbee Indians in the Jim Crow South: Race, Identity, and the Making of a Nation (2010), was published by UNC Press and has won several awards. She is currently working on The Lumbee Indians: An American Struggle, a survey of Lumbee history from 1521 to the present for a general audience. Films she has produced include In the Light of Reverence (2001), Real Indian (1996), Sounds of Faith (1997).

Ten Things I Can’t Do Without (I’m surprised to have discovered that you never know what all you can do without. But here are the things that make me feel like myself)

1. Lydia
2. Time (with my family and friends in North Carolina, Ohio, California, Georgia, Tennessee, Missouri, Arizona, New York, and that mysterious place musicians call “the road”)
3. A babysitter
4. Sound (of music, lately Atlanta-based hip-hop)
5. Sight (through a camera)
6. Smell (of honeysuckle)
7. Touch (of snuggling)
8. Taste (of coffee and bourbon)
9. Cle de Peau concealer in ochre
10. Pa sacks