It’s clear that a good stick remains an imaginative object for us well into adulthood and that the world is full of closet stick gatherers.
Drowned Out
When I first visited Hasankeyf, everything and everyone was black or white. Hasankeyf, good. The dam, bad. The villagers, good. The authorities, bad. My second visit, I learned the stories...
Recognizing Lumbee History Through Land
Lumbee history begins with the stories we tell about family and land. Those stories cannot be told apart from one another, for each gives the other meaning.
Building Worlds in Drowning Lands
People lose their bearings down in Plaquemines. Eudora said so. They get unmoored, take on battles they can’t win, build great towers sure to topple one day, try to push the river....
King Cotton, the Khedive, and the American Civil War
As historian Edward Earle puts it, “one cannot study the history of Egypt during the last half of the nineteenth century, without being profoundly impressed by the importance of the...
¿Mi Tierra? (Home)land for North Carolina Latinos
The roots that connect us with family and neighbors are hard to grow back and require reciprocity. The deep web of relationships that can be tapped for support is missing for many...
Reflection on Growing up on St. Helena Island, SC
Robert declares, “I do my yard work, enjoy life. I’ll work at the museum as long as I can go! I love for people to know the history.”
Connecting with Migrant Farmworkers in Rural Communities
What does it feel like to spend half your life working someone else’s land for someone else’s profit, planting, tending, harvesting, and watching the sun rise and set on it? To live in...
Tied to the Land: A Chef’s Connections to Local Food
If there’s one thing we all believe in, it’s food and people’s access to food. Doing business with Harvested Here helps the food bank have more food, be able to distribute more, and...
Motel Six After the War Game
Today Omar ran in the woods alongside the training boys Yusuf compared it to camping Ralia gossiped about Laith Laith pretended to die Ali cracked open sardines to share in the grass
A Garden in the Woods
I never contemplated the meaning of gardening in the woods until I bought some “wilderness”—thirteen acres of it on the high bluffs of the upper Tchefuncte River in St. Tammany...
Russian Land as the Greatest Artistic Inspiration
When looking at the Arts and Crafts movement in Russia, the ties that unite the land and its artistic inhabitants are clear and strong.
The Spring issue of South Writ Large explores “the land” and our connections to it. In The Unsettling of America: Culture and Agriculture, Wendell Berry says, “Our land passes in and out of our bodies just as our bodies pass in and out of our land; that as we and our land are part of one another, so all who are living as neighbors here, human and plant and animal, are part of one another, and so cannot possibly flourish alone; that, therefore, our culture must be our response to our place, our culture and our place are images of each other and inseparable from each other, and so neither can be better than the other.” Each of our contributors reflects on specific facets of the relationship between ourselves, our creations, and our “land,” whether from the perspective of the native or the immigrant.