Customer Reviews

Dixie: A Personal Odyssey Through Events That Shaped the Modern South

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

For anyone searching for indepth studies of the postwar American South, this is absolutely it. Wilkie brings the keen eye of a child of the South to the descriptions of life in his home town, county, state and region, and uses his journalist's skills to make it all vibrant and immediate to readers of any geographic locale. He does not pull punches in his frank descriptions of what was true in the South's postwar decades, nor does he excuse his own participations and prejudices as he passes through his own changes on a long journey to understanding the nation's necessary reassessments of civil rights and collective wrongs. While it helps to have a prior knowledge of the Civil Rights movement in this country, and a sense of how the Dixiecrats became Republicans, this book is accessible to any reader of American history and social change.

Curtis Wilkie is a Mississippian who paints a broad picture of the Civil Rights movement from the inside out. He cataloges his growth from childhood to young adult as a jounalist in waiting, one with a sympathetic ear for the plight of the descendants of slaves in central Miss. His descriptions of his upbringing in a town divided by race are quite good. And his stories of Ole miss football games and the atmosphere surrounding them are excellent as they foreshadow the struggle of the civil rights community in what Stevie Wonder referred to as "hard times Mississippi." It's a well told story.

As a young adult he escapes to Manhattan and literally and figuratively joins the literatti at Elaine's, that popular Manhattan nightspot frequented by those the likes of Willie Morris. His soft hearted leanings help him fit right in as a typical evenings dicourse is often filled with lamentations with regard to those unenlightened ones, those knuckle dragging country folk left behind. The book is an ongoing narrative of Wilkies life from his work within the movement in his home town, his migration to NYC, his marriage there, and his subsequent return to Mississippi as an older man.

It was a time of great change in the South and Wilkie captures it as well as anyone I've read. Let's just say that it's certainly different there today. A good companion read would be "Rising Tide" by John Barry. It's about the great Mississippi river flood of 1927, a disastor that not only changed the landscape of the south, but also that of America. It's a great lead-up to Wilkie's story which bridges the link between the old south and its new beginnings. One cannot read these books without feeling the tribulations of the misbegotten and dispossesed; it's a tonic for softening the hardest of hearts.

Curtis Wilkie's Dixie is described as a "personal odyssey"--that it is. It is a terrific account of growing up in the Old South and being a part of the making of the New South. It is howlingly funny in parts and chillingly thoughtful and full of insight. Any person northerner or southerner will find this book rewazrding.

Having been born in Mississippi and having defected to the West at the age of 23, I picked up Wilke's book to get in touch with my "Southern roots". Wilke's account of his roots and his involvement with the civil rights movement is more than any of my high school and college history books could ever explain.

Progressive Curtis Wilke made me realize I should be proud of my heritage but also aghast at what caused all of these atrocities and racist views. The South's dirty laundry is something that needs to be acknowledged in order to overcome the past.

Having been born in Mississippi and having defected to the West at the age of 23, I picked up Wilke's book to get in touch with my "Southern roots". Wilke's account of his roots and his involvement with the civil rights movement is more than any of my high school and college history books could ever explain.

Progressive Curtis Wilke made me realize I should be proud of my heritage but also aghast at what caused all of these atrocities and racist views. The South's dirty laundry is something that needs to be acknowledged in order to overcome the past.

An amazing book by an amazing writer. Curtis Wilkie brings his reader through an amazing string of events that changed the South and her people. He elouquently ties history and his personal experiences together for a must read book for people in and out of the South.

My husband is the same age as Curtis Wilkie and I am only a few years younger. We grew up just south of the author in southern Louisiana and southern Mississippi from the 40's to the 60's. We both thought the book extremely well written and insightful. We have given it as a gift and recommended it to others as a must-read.

Mississippi is slowly joining the 21st century and has much to offer now that the white paternalism and good old boy networks are shrinking and there are the beginnings of a black middle class. We can all hope that the south will rise again - with equality for all.