Why Do Museums Make Me Sad?

My father was an engineer who never told stories; he was, matter of fact, like his mother, Minerva, and his cousin Jimmy Carter, another engineer. On the fiftieth anniversary of D-Day he...

Portfolio: Clementine Hunter African House Murals

Memory is a human experience that demonstrates what we believe, what we value, and how we interpret our history. Clementine Hunter’s autobiographical African House Murals provide viewers...

On Being an American

I learned something I could not have learned at home during that period in our history. I learned to be an American as opposed to being a “Negro in America” negotiating the restrictions...

Learning to Love Singapore

Do I hate to leave? No, I’ve been here long enough—long enough to know what makes Singapore such a model of good government, long enough to understand why it’s a model possible for a...

Portfolio: Photographs

Even houses stripped of furnishings have their story to tell. In the connective tissue of these rooms, time and kinship are made manifest. And every now and then, alone with my camera, I...

A Falling Star

Abuelo’s face went blotchy at once, his eyes liquid. It looked as if he were suffering a sudden allergic reaction. “¿Estúpido?” Abuelo asked. “¿Estúpido? Mira muchacha, I...

Haldol and Hyacinths

Sure, there are far more devastating fates, but at the time, I was certain there was nothing worse than enduring the seventh grade as a staggeringly skinny, flat-chested brown girl in Ohio,...

i know the grandmother one had hands

i know the grandmother one had hands but they were always inside the clouds poking holes for the rain to fall.

“Reunification by Bayonet”?

Next came General Ulysses S. Grant, or rather the guy portraying him, the first white man to appear in the parade: bearded, handsome, flat-bellied, sitting astride an immaculately...

Prodigal Daughters

We are all built of shadows, so I wonder, too, how many selves my mother has dismissed, if she mourns an alternate person every day she lives away from the South. If, like me, she feels at...

A Small Monument at a Small Church about a Big Story

But if they stopped for just a moment, they would be connected to a little-known but fantastic tale of how an experience of a teenaged Chinese boy on that church site influenced the history...

Fall 2013

The concept of memory is as elusive as the thing remembered. In this issue, our contributors find myriad ways to capture and lend meaning to memories. When traveling abroad, how do we interpret the lessons learned from finding ourselves immersed in foreign culture and how do they inform American identity?  At home in the South, what does the fading glory of historic architecture tell us? How do we find beauty in representations of difficult days gone by through art? Can reflecting on tragedy bring healing, or at least understanding? Join us as we explore memory through art, literature, research, experience, and memoir in the Fall 2013 issue of South Writ Large.