Synopses & Reviews
The Storied South features the voices--by turn searching and honest, coy and scathing--of twenty-six of the most luminous artists and thinkers in the American cultural firmament, from Eudora Welty, Pete Seeger, and Alice Walker to William Eggleston, Bobby Rush, and C. Vann Woodward. Masterfully drawn from one-on-one interviews conducted by renowned folklorist William Ferris over the past forty years, the book reveals how storytelling is viscerally tied to southern identity and how the work of these southern or southern-inspired creators has shaped the way Americans think and talk about the South.
The Storied South offers a unique, intimate opportunity to sit at the table with these men and women and learn how they worked and how they perceived their art. The volume also features 45 of Ferris's striking photographic portraits of the speakers and a CD and a DVD of original audio and films of the interviews.
Review
"What a tremendous work! This wonderful book should grace every southerner's library, remembering that every southerner is not in the South."
--Morgan Freeman
Review
"Deeply relevant. Bill Ferris captures revealing stories of some of the South's finest artists while raising bold questions about differences of place, time, class, race, and intention."
--Tom Rankin, Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University
Review
"William Ferris has long reigned as the unimpeachable source of the entire southern experience. His work on southern folklore and the composition of the
Encyclopedia of Southern Culture have made him both legendary and necessary. His book,
The Storied South, is a love song to the South Bill helped illuminate. It's a crowning achievement of his own storied career."
--Pat Conroy
Review
"Ferris's bringing-together of these famous personages offers us an unexpected and rich profusion of spirits, intelligences, sympathies, talents, enthusiasms, prejudices, passions and a few arch posturings and dissemblings to make it all plausible. That they are all (or mostly) southerners is far from what's most interesting about these "greats." However, that what they say confirms their irremediable human-ness, is interesting, and is also (I have to say) very reassuring."--Richard Ford
Review
"Ferris presents us with artists' testimonies on their own histories, their work, and their theories about what it means to live in the South. These compelling stories help us to ask fresh and meaningful questions about the meaning of art, race, region, and history. They surprise us, make us laugh, and open their work to us anew."
--Henry Louis Gates Jr.
Review
"[A] rich collection developed over 40 years. . . . [A] moving and eloquent book."
-Publishers Weekly
Review
"[A] wonderful work. Required for viewers and readers interested in Southern folkways and culture."
-Library Journal starred review
Review
"Compiles decades' worth of deeply personal interviews with many of the South's greatest luminaries. . . . . And thanks to an included CD and DVD, their voices leap off the page and come to life."
-Garden and Gun
Review
"Not to be missed. . . . This collection is a triumph of intelligent and provocative conversation."
-Clarion-Ledger
Review
"
The Storied South bring[s] these tales to life. . . . With Ferris as a guide, readers will get a revealing look at the region before air-conditioning and chain businesses, smartphones and corporate monoliths changed it forever."
-Raleigh News and Observer
Review
"Ferris' idea of an essential South, layered by a narrative sensibility in music, literature and the visual arts, sings to the better angels of our nature. . . . Yet reading this remarkable book one realizes, too, that a brooding, unsettled nature about the South is still sadly with us."
-New Orleans Magazine
Review
"[A] treat for lovers of Southern literature."
-Wilmington Star News
Review
"Intimate and moving. . . . Undoubtedly a volume that should be included in the personal library of every Southerner or lover of the Southern storytelling tradition. When the final page of
The Storied South is turned, readers will truly feel like they have been sitting on the front porch listening to the voices and stories of these legendary Southern icons."
-Click Magazine
Synopsis
The Storied South features the voices--by turn searching and honest, coy and scathing--of twenty-six of the most luminous artists and thinkers in the American cultural firmament, from Eudora Welty, Pete Seeger, and Alice Walker to William Eggleston, Bobby Rush, and C. Vann Woodward. Masterfully drawn from one-on-one interviews conducted by renowned folklorist William Ferris over the past forty years, the book reveals how storytelling is viscerally tied to southern identity and how the work of these southern or southern-inspired creators has shaped the way Americans think and talk about the South.
Synopsis
The Storied South features the voices--by turn searching and honest, coy and scathing--of twenty-six of the most luminous artists and thinkers in the American cultural firmament, from Eudora Welty, Pete Seeger, and Alice Walker to William Eggleston, Bobby Rush, and C. Vann Woodward. Masterfully drawn from one-on-one interviews conducted by renowned folklorist William Ferris over the past forty years, the book reveals how storytelling is viscerally tied to southern identity and how the work of these southern or southern-inspired creators has shaped the way Americans think and talk about the South.
About the Author
William Ferris is Joel R. Williamson Eminent Professor of History and senior associate director of the Center for the Study of the American South at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. A former chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities, Ferris is author of Give My Poor Heart Ease: Voices of the Mississippi Blues, among other books, and coeditor of the award-winning Encyclopedia of Southern Culture.