Voices of Exile: Reimagining a Polyvocal American South

Abstract

Voices of Exile: Reimagining a Polyvocal American South, focuses on the phenomenon of community formation and reformation, particularly the perpetual reimaginings of the South in Southern studies and literatures. This project argues that it is time for the South to be reimagined once more--to move away from traditional discussions of the South along a black/white divide and toward a more pluralistic understanding of this region. In my work, I create a genealogy of what J. Anthony Paredes calls a "New, New South" by recovering the neglected voices that have always been there, but that need to be (re)incorporated into the Southern dialectic. Through a cross-cultural reading of works by American Indian, African American, and Anglo-American writers, I explore a polyvocal South in which regional and ethnic identities are continually contested and reshaped. I pair literary texts that (re)imagine key historical moments of community formation with primary documents of the historical moment being addressed. Literary texts and authors explored in this project include: Diane Glancy's Pushing the Bear, William Melvin Kelley's A Different Drummer, LeAnne Howe's Shell Shaker, and William Faulkner's Wilderness stories and Go Down, Moses. My project's aim is to look at the South as a community or narrative of polyvocality, tearing down the idea of a master narrative or "bifurcated" South, and trading it in for a "non-traditional" South which is more representative of America--a multicultural, multivocal community.