Delta Sources and Resources ...... 134 The King Biscuit Blues Festival (Helena, Arkansas) by LaDawn Fuhr Reviews ...... 137 Epps, Slavery on the Periphery: The Kansas-Missouri Border in the Antebellum and Civil War Eras, reviewed by Carl Moneyhon Nabors, From Oligarchy to Republicanism: The Great Task of Reconstruction, reviewed by William H. Pruden III Gordon, The Second Coming of the KKK: The Ku Klux Klan of the 1920s and the American Political Tradition; and Harcourt, Ku Klux Kulture: America and the Klan in the 1920s, reviewed by Kenneth C. Barnes Cox, Goat Castle: A True Story of Murder, Race, and the Gothic South, reviewed by Colin Woodward Ossad, Omar Nelson Bradley: America’s GI General, reviewed by Keith M. Finley Devlin, Remember Little Rock, reviewed by Misti Nicole Harper Ward, Out in the Rural, reviewed by Anthony B. Newkirk Bales, ed., Willie Morris: Shifting Interludes, reviewed by Barclay Key Osing, May Day, reviewed by Lynn DiPier Berard, Water Tossing Boulders: How A Family of Chinese Immigrants Led the First Fight to Desegregate Schools in the Jim Crow South, reviewed by Doreen Yu Dong Mitchell, Unnatural Habitats & Other Stories, reviewed by Janelle Collins Ferris, The South in Color: A Rural Journal, reviewed by Marcus Charles Tribbett Contributors ...... 158

______Arkansas Review 49.2 (August 2018) 82 Reviews

Slavery on the Periphery: The in the creation of a world different from that Kansas-Missouri Border in the An- each brought to the confrontation. Addition- ally, she is influenced by the rhetoric of histori- tebellum and Civil War Eras. By ans concerned with social justice. Kristen Epps. (Athens, GA: Uni- Epps’s first two chapters address the efforts versity of Georgia Press, 2016. Pp. of white slave holders to turn this area into a xi-xvi + 265, list of illustrations, slave society between 1840 and 1854. These whites, mainly from the border states to the acknowledgments, introduction, east, clearly sought to replicate the slave system epilogue, abbreviations, notes, bib- with which they were familiar. They were liography, index. $59.95, hard- forced, however, to accommodate their ideal- ized system to the presence of native American cover) people and the area’s unique physical environ- ment. The result was the creation of what Epps This book examines slavery and race rela- calls a small scale slave system in which slave tions along the border between modern Kansas holdings were relatively small and the economy and Missouri from 1820, the year of Missouri’s and culture similar but not totally alike that of statehood and Kansas’s existence as Indian Ter- other border slave states. This small scale sys- ritory, into the 1880s. tem was characterized by greater contact be- The author, currently tween masters and slaves, a more diverse an assistant professor employment of slaves outside of agriculture, rel- at the University of atively widespread slave hiring, greater slave Central Arkansas, mobility since slaves often had to accompany contends that the their masters on trips to town, and more slave story of slavery that marriages where couples belonged to different exists in the rich his- masters. Epps maintains that these circum- toriography of this stances made it possible for slaves to gain area has been consid- greater autonomy, a fact that led to increased ered tangential to the confrontation between masters and slaves. In political and ideologi- this interaction of masters, slaves, and the fron- cal conflicts associated tier, Epps sees the emergence of a regionally with “Bleeding Kansas.” This study rectifies unique form of slavery. While the system was that oversight by examining slavery per se and unique, the transformation allowed slavery, as giving voice to blacks as well as the whites ownership of individuals, to thrive on the fron- whose stories have constituted the history of tier where it and the peoples involved in the the area up to this point. Epps recognizes the system became a central part of the story of importance of historians of the Middle Ground Bleeding Kansas and the Civil War. Through in this work, accepting their hypothesis that this period, Epps considers the border between understanding the frontier requires attention to Missouri and Kansas to be virtually non-exis- the collisions that take place between races, tent. cultures, and even the environment and the re- After establishing the character of the bor- ciprocal impact of all of these on one another derlands and the slave system within them, ______Arkansas Review 49.2 (August 2018) 137 Epps turns to the impact of the growing politi- counties showed a twenty-five percent decrease, cal crisis on the area in her next two chapters. reflecting the flight of slaves. In seeking their Almost immediately with the Kansas-Nebraska freedom and in military service, they reshaped Act the border line between the two areas society along the border and encouraged a new began to take a clearer shape as the pro-slavery definition of freedom. and anti-slavery forces contested control. How An epilogue carries the story into Recon- that contest would come out was not clear in struction and on to the 1880s and shows the 1854. As Epps points out, slavery already was problems of building a society in which blacks firmly entrenched on the Kansas as well as the continued to assert their freedom while many Missouri side of this political boundary. whites proved incapable of accepting that free- Through the early years of the conflict slave- dom. White supremacists existed in Missouri, holders controlled not only the territorial gov- as they had before the war, but Epps also points ernment, but also municipal and county out that, rather than comprising a bastion of governments in the Kansas Territory. Epps finds egalitarianism or individuality, many white that slavery continued to thrive through this Kansans were equally racist. Epps sees these period, although by 1857–1858, as the entry of years as a continuation of the struggle by Kansas into the Union as a free state became African Americans to gain control over their more certain, fewer slave owning families own lives by a people no longer slaves, but now moved into the Territory. Epps argues that this facing economic inequality and even continued certainty led to a destabilization of slavery along violence. the Missouri border demonstrated by the con- tinued escape of slaves to freedom and increased --Carl Moneyhon activity by abolitionists in Kansas. Even before slavery was abolished on the Kansas part of the Ststs border, slavery was finished. On the eve of statehood in 1860 only two slaves remained in From Oligarchy to Republicanism: the Territory. Epps is not as clear how these fac- The Great Task of Reconstruction. tors worked in Missouri. Her argument rests pri- marily on anecdotal information and she fails By Forrest A. Nabors. (Columbia: to address the fact that slaveholding actually in- University of Missouri Press, 2017. creased significantly along the Missouri border xix + 399, preface, notes, bibliog- in the 1850s. raphy, index. $45.00, hardcover) In a chapter on the war years Epps observes, as have other historians, that in the border country slaves saw the war as the opportunity From Oligarchy to Republicanism: The to assert their freedom, an opportunity used Great Task of Reconstruction by Forrest A. fully to their advantage. Not only did they lib- Nabors is a thoughtful and thought provoking erate themselves, but they began, through mil- work. It is also an exasperating and frustrating itary service and other ways, to challenge the one that spends no small number of pages trying racist stereotypes prevalent among many to decide if it is a work of history or political whites. Still, through the war years they faced theory. While there can be no denying that it uncertainty because the chaos on the border, is well researched—up to a point, for the admit- and particularly guerilla bands, not only pre- tedly constricted parameters of the sources that sented opportunity but danger for the runaways. it mines, albeit to full value, are part of its prob- In this case, Epps shows with census figures how lem—its failure to go beyond its limited re- the black population in the western Missouri search trove, as well as its failure to provide any ______Arkansas Review 49.2 (August 2018) 138 broader context for what it finds, make it a sin- impression. These instances, part of the almost gularly frustrating read. exclusive reliance on Republican contributions As history, it is a classic example of the old to Congressional debates, as well as the mem- adage that history is written by the winners. But oirs of the Leaders of the Reconstruction Re- while Nabors acknowledges that much of his publicans, inevitably ask the reader to accept work and most of the quotations are selec- political posturing as scholarly fact. That form tions—ones that he admits are often longer of presentation adds to the confusion, making than one usually expects—from the Congres- it hard, as previously noted, to determine sional Republicans who oversaw and imple- whether the book seeks to be a work of political mented Reconstruction, i.e. the war’s winners, theory or political history. the lack of any alternative ideas or interpreta- Indeed, if it is political theory, then the way tions, not to mention any context for the re- Nabors intermingles the Declaration of Inde- marks, results ultimately in an incomplete and pendence and the Constitution when he talks unbalanced picture. While this is his right, it is about the Constitution’s power to create a re- particularly frustrating for readers familiar with publican government that fosters equality may the period who undoubtedly will have questions be appropriate, but it is not good history. In- about the statements by partisan office holders deed, while the promise of equality central to that Nabors presents as fact. Indeed, over and the Declaration may have been on the minds over again Nabors presents political rhetoric as of the members of the Constitutional Conven- a substitute for historical truth. tion, it did not merit inclusion. Equality does Unhappily, while such “facts” are not only not enter the Constitution until the addition of central to the work’s argument, they also repre- the 14th Amendment in 1868. sent a substantive weakness—at least when the While Nabors admits, however uncon- work is viewed as history. Time and again we sciously, that the book offers a one-sided pres- hear that Congressman X or Senator Y “as- entation, the approach leaves the serted,” “declared,” or knowledgeable reader hungry for the slightest “recalled” something acknowledgment of another perspective. We that furthers the argu- see what Republicans saw as their challenge and ment that the antebel- how they sought to address it, but we are not lum South was an convinced that it was the whole problem, or oligarchy. But there is that it had been solved—in either the former no evidence beyond Confederacy or the nation as a whole, then or the Congressionally- going forward. Indeed, based on the title, we based assertions, and can expect to learn that the Republicans had for modern readers succeeded in transforming the South from an steeped in McCarthy- oligarchy to a republican form of government, ism, the Pentagon Pa- but we are never definitively told that it hap- pers, and Watergate, pened, an interesting omission in a book that “facts” emanating from a government source do thrives on often unsupported assertions. It is not carry quite the weight they once did. In- hinted, and even implied, but it is never fully deed, further undermining the effort is the fact demonstrated, perhaps because the post-war that in the few cases where the assertion is South that Nabors presents is one in which clearly fact-based, rather than opinion or judg- black rights exist only on paper and the realities ment, a fact check of the statement often re- of the governing process make it no more re- veals inaccuracies while the lack of any context publican than it was before the war. leaves the reader with a singularly misleading Again, while the book’s subtitle makes clear ______Arkansas Review 49.2 (August 2018) 139 Nabors’ belief that the real challenge of Recon- willingness to come to grips with the failure of struction was the need to achieve what he fre- the Founding Fathers to directly address the quently terms a “regime change,” the poisonous issue that bedeviled the document transformation from an oligarchy to republican- and the whole founding era, slavery. While un- ism is never revealed. We are never shown how able to ignore the slave holdings of Washing- reconstruction provided a new republican gov- ton, Jefferson, and company, he lets them off ernment in the South, and without an effort to easy, again solicitously referring to them as do so, the reader versed in history could easily “slaveholding abolitionists” while arguing that argue that the oligarchy as Nabors defines it they did not take a harder line for fear of dis- continued through and after Reconstruction, at rupting the union. least in terms of the many groups left without Admittedly, Rhode Island had less clout power or denied their rights under a republican than South Carolina, but in fact the Conven- government. But in fact, that lack of informa- tion did proceed without Rhode Island and the tion is very much in keeping with a disconnect new government got started before either between actions and words that is a troubling Rhode Island or North Carolina had ratified constant throughout the work. Indeed, perhaps the document. The bottom line—one that it is because of Nabors’ political theory bent, Nabors struggles with—is that the Founders, but we see much more theorizing, not to men- however much they may have loathed slavery, tion pontificating, than we do actions. It is his- still wrote a Constitution and established a tory without human action, and it is a history country that allowed the practice to go on. He where words speak louder than actions, espe- treats this reality almost as if it were an acci- cially the action of writing and ratifying a Con- dent. And yet it is asking a lot of the reader to stitution which sanctions the existence of excuse the Founders, to accept that they not slavery. Too often it appears that Nabors thinks only had no choice but that they believed that that if he comes up with enough words he can slavery would eventually die out—or Congress obscure reality. Certainly nothing demonstrates would eventually act—so it was acceptable in this better than his treatment of the slave-hold- 1787. Nabors knows that not only could unfore- ing Founders whose slave ownership he excuses seen events change things, but in fact, an un- by reading their minds (or at least their mail), foreseen development—the invention of the divining their intentions, and crediting their cotton gin—did change everything. Yet hopes that slavery is an evil that will end. He Nabors’s determination to look at the philo- even goes so far as to label them “slaveholding sophic underpinnings of the road to the Civil abolitionists,” a phrase which, I acknowledge I War causes him to refuse to assess the changes had never seen before. Happily, a Google search in views on slavery. He acknowledges a change made clear that I am not alone. In the end we in the way the South views slavery, but sees it are reminded that words can only go so far. only as a philosophical one, a product of John For all of these concerns, one must recog- C. Calhoun’s persuasive wiles. He gives no sub- nize the thorough manner in which Nabors an- stantive consideration to the way views on slav- alyzes aspects of Southern political thought in ery could have been impacted by the changing the antebellum period. Certainly anyone unfa- role of slavery in the altered economic land- miliar with the ideas of South Carolina’s John scape. The invention of the cotton gin changed C. Calhoun should come away with a consider- everything—including the role of slavery in the ably greater understanding of the philosophy of southern and national economy. He mentions the Yale-educated statesman. And yet even his it—how could he not? But that is the end of it. treatment of Calhoun takes us back to one of Instead, he chooses to focus on the philosophi- the most troubling aspects of the book—his un- cally motivated changes in attitudes, failing to ______Arkansas Review 49.2 (August 2018) 140 give even short shrift to the financial factors— to name but a few. Anyone familiar with that or more simply put, greed—that could have era cannot help but see the similarities and triggered the change. wonder how Nabors would reconcile those ef- Indeed, in the end, Nabors is so intent on forts with his ideas about the regime change in making the reader aware of Calhoun’s influence the South. that he minimizes the reality of the nation’s In the end, From Oligarchy to Republican- roots, all but ignoring the stark reality of the ism offers an interesting look at the antebellum Constitutional embrace, however awkward, of South as well as a distinctive take on the role slavery, while also ignoring the economic fac- of slavery in the fledgling United States. Its tors that were as much, if not more, likely to dense, often academic jargon and approach have changed the region’s attitude towards slav- probably limits its audience, and the greater un- ery. Ironically, Nabors cites the South’s illiter- derstanding and familiarity of that more select acy as evidence of the oligarchy; he still puts a audience will also take Nabors right into the greater emphasis on the influence of this major lion’s den given the many questions and prob- political theorist when a simple recognition of lems that arise from the lack of breadth and the shift in the economic role, value, and im- context, issues that a higher level of reader can- pact of slavery might well be the real key. not help but recognize. And yet the questions, Not surprisingly, Nabors also minimizes the issues, and arguments that characterize Nabors’s important foundation that Jefferson and Madi- work cannot help but force any reader to reflect son laid for Calhoun through their Kentucky and rethink their previous perceptions. While and Virginia Resolutions, saying simply that he may not always persuade, he seldom fails to they abandoned them. Yes, they did, when the provoke, and at a time when the debates over idea was no longer needed after their victory in race in America are forcing the nation to relook the election of 1800 made the issue moot. Cal- at its past and the roots of that issue, a work like houn’s initial position was no different from this, one that forces us to consider what the past theirs—he was in the minority trying to salvage really entailed, is always of value. But it would his position, but unlike Jefferson and Madison, have been nice if Nabors himself had done it in he was unable to gain power in a way that might a broader fashion. have made his effort as irrelevant as theirs. In- stead he continued to fine tune and hone his --William H. Pruden III arguments to serve his purposes. We can only speculate whether Jefferson or Madison might ststs have done the same had Adams—or even Burr—won the election of 1800. The Second Coming of the KKK: The narrow focus that characterizes this The Ku Klux Klan of the 1920s work leaves those with a broader understanding of American history asking numerous questions. and the American Political Tradi- As Nabors describes the imbalance and ex- tion. By Linda Gordon. (New ploitation that marks the antebellum south, the York: Liveright Publishing, a divi- discussion of the dominance of the wealthy elite sion of W.W. Norton, 2017. Pp. and their control of the political process that renders the south oligarchical rather than re- xiv, 272, preface, acknowledg- publican, one cannot help but think of a com- ments, appendices, notes, index, parable imbalance to come with the late $29.95, hardcover); Ku Klux Kul- nineteenth-century advent of industrialism and the rise of Rockefeller, Carnegie, and Morgan ture: America and the Klan in the ______Arkansas Review 49.2 (August 2018) 141 1920s. By Felix Harcourt. hours-long speechmaking at Klan events seem (Chicago: University of Chicago hopelessly dated. Yet some Klan methods were not only modern but innovative. Simmons Press, 2017. Pp. 253, acknowledg- hired public-relations experts Tyler and Clarke, ments, notes, glossary, bibliogra- and they transformed the Klan into a business. phy, index. $45, hardcover) Membership skyrocketed in 1921 and 1922 when Tyler and Clarke developed a recruiting process reminiscent of a pyramid scheme. With The fall of 2017 saw the publication of two this system recruiters kept $4 of the $10 initia- important books about the 1920s Ku Klux Klan. tion fee and sent the remaining $6 up the chain Both books add significantly to the growing with each higher official getting a cut until the body of literature about the Klan. rest arrived in the hands of Simmons, Tyler, and Linda Gordon, professor at New York Uni- Clarke at the Klan's headquarters in Atlanta. versity and winner of two Bancroft prizes, ex- The Klan profited greatly from the sale of robes, amines the Klan as a coast-to-coast all- hoods, and other paraphernalia. The leaders American phenomenon, unlike the original made fortunes. Klan of Reconstruction which only flourished Gordon interprets the Klan through the in the former Confederate states. Gordon ar- prism of gender, considering vigilante violence gues that the Klan constructed a mainstream as an expression of manliness. She notes the vi- ideology of intolerance that spawned a political olence was occasional and often an adjunct of movement in the mid-1920s. But even after the local police departments. In her analysis of decline of the Klan in the later 1920s, its legacy KKK feminism, she owes much to Kathleen shaped far-right political culture in the United Blee’s Women of the Klan: Racism and Gender States for years to come. in the 1920s (1991). Unlike Blee, however, she In a highly readable form, Gordon describes oddly fails to even mention Little Rock’s Rob- six “ancestors” of the KKK: the original Ku bie Gill Comer, the head of the Women of the Klux of the 1860s; nativism; anti-liquor organ- Ku Klux Klan for all but a year of its existence izations, such as the WCTU and Anti-Saloon in the 1920s. League; fraternal associations, such as Masons The book closes with an analysis of political and Oddfellows; Christian evangelicalism; and action by the Klan. Gordon ably explains the the vaguest of the six, populism. She convinc- seldom-told story of the 1924 Democratic Na- ingly charts ways these earlier movements leant tional Convention. At this gathering in New elements of structure, motivation, and ideology York City, Klan leaders and delegates vigorously to the 1920s Klan. opposed the nomination of the Roman Another chapter introduces Klan leaders, Catholic Governor of New York, Al Smith. whom she describes as an eclectic mix of ec- The Klan pushed the candidacy of a strict pro- centrics. These include founder William Sim- hibitionist, William McAdoo. The convention mons, charlatans such as Indiana Klan leader also saw a show-down over an anti-Klan plank David Stephenson, entrepreneurs like Edward proposed for the party platform. The position Tyler and Elizabeth Clarke, and serious-minded failed by just four of nearly a thousand votes. moralists such as Hiram Evans, the key leader The Klan faction was so large and firm that the in the 1920s. Smith/McAdoo competition became a stale- Gordon exposes the dichotomy in the Klan mate going through 103 ballots, making it the between something old and something new. longest presidential convention in American Klan ideology rejected many changes occurring history, before a compromise third candidate re- in modern America, and the hokey rituals and ceived the nomination, John W. Davis. The ______Arkansas Review 49.2 (August 2018) 142 Klan controlled state houses and city halls or criticized the Klan. He also surveys the Klan’s throughout America—from Portland, Oregon own long list of national and local papers. An- to Portland, Maine, including Little Rock here other chapter looks at cheap novels that took in the middle of the country. On the economic on Klan themes, such as University of Arkansas front, both women’s and men’s Klans organized professor Murray Sheehan’s Half-Gods, set in a boycotts of businesses owned by Catholics, university town in the Ozarks where a small- Jews, or those deemed immoral, and steered minded Klan mob serves as moral conscience business to shops owned by Klansmen. for the community. Gordon’s book is a beautifully written and Harcourt moves from print media to other reasoned overview of the 1920s Klan, and it avenues of culture. A chapter on film pre- nicely incorporates the new historiography of dictably starts with Birth of a Nation, which in- recent years. If the book has a central thesis, it spired Simmons to reorganize the Klan in 1915 is how mainstream American bigotry in the in a case of life imitating art. Nonetheless, Har- 1920s against Catholics, Jews, African-Ameri- court surprises readers with a recounting of cans, and immigrants created a legacy of intol- many now-forgotten films and stage produc- erance in this country to the present day. tions with Klan themes. Another chapter ex- While Gordon’s book nicely sums up what amines how the Klan used music in rallies and we know about the 1920s Klan, Felix Harcourt’s sponsored bands and choirs. One such group, Ku Klux Kulture the Chicago Mammoth Klan Band, with six breaks new ground. hundred members, tried to claim the title as Harcourt examines world’s largest band. With the enormous inter- the Klan as a cultural est in the Klan, there was money to be made movement, rather selling sheet music and phonograph recordings than an organization. of such hits as “Daddy Swiped Our Last Clean He argues that the Sheet and Joined the Ku Klux Klan.” Klan captured the Another chapter describes radio program- imagination of popu- ing that gave a voice to Klansmen and women lar culture, with both on the airwaves. Imperial Wizard Hiram Evans with positive and neg- first spoke on the radio in Kansas City in Au- ative interpretations. gust 1923. By 1927 the Klan had purchased its However, the Klan own radio station and license, WTFF, and also itself used genres pumped out a powerful broadcast heard in all and technologies of popular culture to publicize parts of the United States, even Canada and the organization and its message. Cuba. Some of the cultural artifacts Harcourt dis- Lastly, Harcourt talks about how the Klan cusses have come up in other historical litera- capitalized on the public fascination with ture about the 1920s Klan, such as Gordon’s sports. The KKK sponsored boxing tourna- book. But Harcourt is the first to examine sys- ments and organized its own basketball and tematically the cultural manifestations of the baseball teams. It is hard to imagine the reality Klan. He contextualizes these artifacts, which of Klan teams taking on squads of other frater- strike us today as ridiculous, comical, or sinister nal organizations, the Knights of Columbus, within the mainstream culture of the twenties. even slugging it out with Jewish and African- The 1920s may have been the heyday of American teams. newspapers and popular print media. Harcourt Harcourt piles on the evidence to support devotes considerable space to an exhaustive ac- the book’s thesis that the Klan, both as subject counting of newspapers that both championed and consumer, was at the center of American ______Arkansas Review 49.2 (August 2018) 143 popular culture in the 1920s. The bulk of the Dockery and Dana lived in “Glenwood”— book sometimes reads like a catalog of Klan-re- what became known as the “Goat Castle”—a lated cultural artifacts. Still, therein too lies a filthy, crumbling antebellum plantation home strength, for it provides a handy reference work adjacent to Merrill’s property. Animals had the that will be much used. run of the house. Goats gnawed on the furniture Together, these two new works demonstrate and antique books stored inside. Dockery’s the centrality of the Klan to mainstream Amer- housemate, Dick Dana, was a former pianist ica in the 1920s. This Klan was very different who liked to take off his clothes and roam the from the short-lived and regional Ku Klux of woods nearby. Dockery, the daughter of a Con- Reconstruction and the modern Klan of the federate general, had once been a belle with lit- Civil Rights era and beyond, which hugged the erary aspirations. Despite the ghosts of fringes of society as an extremist movement. aristocracy that haunted Glenwood, Dockery These books suggest there is still more to say and Dana did not own the property. In fact, about the 1920s Klan. Today, as nativist posi- they were broke and living on what their goats tions increasingly form part of the public con- and chickens could provide. versation, I expect the Klan will receive even The Goat Castle case garnered attention more attention in the future. not only for its bizarre circumstances and racial drama, it excited Depression era readers who --Kenneth C. Barnes sought to alleviate their woes by reading about crime and murder. It was the age Bonnie and ststs Clyde and the Lindbergh kidnapping. The Goat Castle found an Goat Castle: A True Story of Mur- easy place in national der, Race, and the Gothic South. headlines. It seemed cut from the pages of By Karen L. Cox. (Chapel Hill: Edgar Allan Poe or UNC Press, 2017. Pp. 227, ac- William Faulkner. Vis- knowledgments, notes, bibliogra- itors flocked to see the phy, index. $26.00, hardcover) Goat Castle. Eventu- ally Octavia Dockery and Dick Dana cashed On the night of August 4, 1932, Jennie in by giving tours of Merrill was shot to death in Natchez, Missis- the house for a quarter sippi. Soon after, her body was found dumped per visitor. in the woods near her home. The “Goat Castle” Dockery and Dana had much to offer those case, as it was known, became a national sensa- who were fascinated by Merrill’s murder. The tion. In addition to its southern Gothic ele- story Cox is most interested in, however, is the ments, it played into American racial fears, as fate of Emily Burns (known as “Sister”), the the alleged murderer turned out to be a black young black woman who was arrested as an ac- man who was shot and killed by a Pine Bluff po- complice of George Pearls, the man officially lice officer. But what fascinated people more named as Merrill’s killer. Since Pearls was killed were the principle white figures: the shrewd and before he could be put on trial, authorities manipulative Octavia Dockery, an elderly na- wanted to bring Burns to justice—whatever tive of Arkansas dubbed the “Goat Woman,” that might mean in 1930s Mississippi. and her live-in companion, the eccentric “Wild As Cox illustrates, it is likely that Merrill’s Man” Dick Dana. killing was accidental, rather than premedi- ______Arkansas Review 49.2 (August 2018) 144 tated. Merrill put up a fight the night she was cestors’ travel from Maryland to the Deep killed. Armed with a pistol, she fought off her South via the slave trade. But she has no docu- attacker, though unsuccessfully. The local sher- mentary evidence for this. She assumes her iff had evidence Dockery and Dana were ac- statements are true based on an inductive read- complices to robbery and subsequent homicide, ing of secondary sources. At the same time, Cox though they were never tried for it. Octavia had refrains from speculating about Merrill’s friend feuded regularly with her neighbor and fought Duncan Minor, who visited Merrill every night her in the courts. Octavia’s and Dick’s finger- and was the sole beneficiary in her will. Merrill prints were all over the crime scene. never married, but what was the nature of her Emily Burns, however, was the one who and Minor’s relationship? Friends? Lovers? took the fall. In Jim Crow era Natchez, officials Whatever it was, Merrill clearly cared for him. were loose with due process. “Sister” languished While Goat Castle is a slim book, Cox could in jail for months without representation. Her have spent more time on Minor rather than, trial was sham, and though it is likely she never say, including five pages of acknowledgments, entered the house on the night of the killing, much of which is devoted to her cat. she narrowly avoided a capital conviction. She Goat Castle should appeal to historians at ultimately served eight years in the notorious all levels, from undergraduates to advanced Parchman prison farm. She was released be- scholars. The book would serve well those cause the governor pardoned her, citing the fact teaching depression era US or southern history that Sister helped Pearls only under duress. and have a love for the bizarre. The story is The story of the Goat Castle is an interest- timely, from its attention to race to the behav- ing one, and Cox tells it well. The book is well ior of white people thriving under the media researched and written, though it contains spotlight. As was true during the Goat Castle more clichés than I would expect from a sea- case, we are confronted daily by shameless soned historian. The book gets off to a shaky white people who know how to manipulate the start, due to Cox’s sketchy knowledge of Delta system in order to inflate their egos and reap fi- history, more specifically, her grasp of numbers nancial gain. In too many ways, America has concerning the slave population in the Missis- not changed much since the 1930s. sippi Delta, the slave trade, and the difference between farmers and sharecroppers. --Colin Woodward She is also occasionally vague concerning her sources. The paper trail for the principle ac- ststs tors in the Goat Castle drama is slim before the night of the killing. As someone who has re- Omar Nelson Bradley: America’s searched the case myself, I was surprised that GI General. By Steven L. Ossad. Cox is not more concerned with certain details. For example, she cites Dockery’s birth year as (Columbia: University of Missouri 1866, though her tombstone, available for view- Press, 2017. Pp. 460, list of maps, ing on findagrave.com, has her listed as being acknowledgments, abbreviations, born in 1865. If the headstone is wrong, then chronology, prologue: “The 1913 Cox could have mentioned this, even if only in a footnote. Army-Navy Baseball Game,” in- Cox is eager to speculate on some of the fig- troduction, notes, glossary, bibliog- ures in her story, though, surprisingly, she re- raphy, index. $36.95, hardcover) frains from doing so for others. When it comes to Emily Burns, for example, Cox traces her an- ______Arkansas Review 49.2 (August 2018) 145 There is no shortage of publications on both Bradley’s firm grasp of infantry tactics as World War II. Fueled by blockbuster movies well as his periodic shortcomings as a com- and dynamic television documentaries, interest mander, none of which proved as glaring as his in the conflict has exploded in recent decades. failure to recognize that the December 1944 It should come as little surprise that a war Nazi attack along his front in the Ardennes was which witnessed the height of human sacrifice something other than a diversion for a more as well as the depth of human depravity has gar- substantive assault elsewhere. Valuable time nered such attention from an audience that in- and countless lives were lost as Bradley initially cludes both academics and the general public. downplayed what became known as the Battle Larger than life American military commanders of the Bulge as it unfolded directly before him. such as Dwight Eisenhower, George Patton, and True to the form noted by Ossad, Bradley never Douglas MacArthur have all been the subject took full responsibility for his miscalculation. of extensive scrutiny as have the common sol- Ossad, a one-time Wall Street technology diers who have been collectively labeled “the analyst turned military historian, has a lot to greatest generation.” Despite widespread inter- teach academics who sometimes lose sight of est in the war, many aspects of the conflict re- the importance of retaining at least the spirit of main neglected, dwarfed by topics that arguably objectivity. Many “amateur” historians also make better copy. One often overlooked figure struggle to strike an unbiased stance, yet excel is American commander and Missouri native at telling an engaging story by bringing their Omar Bradley, a man whom famed combat jour- characters to life–something their professional nalist Ernie Pyle dubbed the “GI General” for counterparts often fail to accomplish. Ossad his common dress and down to earth demeanor. proves just the opposite of his peers writing out- Military historian Steven L. Ossad attempts to side of academia in that he presents a balanced spark interest in this lesser known WWII com- portrait of the general, yet he does little to ele- mander in his simply-titled biography, Omar vate Bradley to something other than a one-di- Bradley: America’s GI General, 1893–1981. mensional figure–a man who did his job with a Ossad’s work features a well-balanced nar- reasonable level of competence but nothing rative. Although he trumpets Bradley’s impor- more. Bradley’s personal life and basic character tance to the US war effort, he also highlights are never fully developed in Ossad’s narrative that the general often got himself into trouble which does little to dispel popular perceptions for his failure to admit mistakes or to assess in regarding the general as a rather bland figure. any meaningful way his shortcomings. These In the pages of Ossad’s book, Bradley comes negative traits proved, according to Ossad, a across as rather flat. consistent feature of Bradley’s life stretching Although never fully humanizing the gen- from his days as a West Point cadet to his me- eral, Ossad’s work certainly reveals the supreme teoric rise in America’s wartime Army. Ossad importance of the general during WWII as well proves most effective in addressing the general’s as the valuable contributions he made after the post-war experience as head of the Veterans war. In an age of mounting discontent with the Administration and as Commander of the inefficiency of the Department of Veterans Af- newly formed Joint Chiefs of Staff. Naturally, fairs, there is certainly something to be learned the war years are also covered, including from Bradley’s generally effective leadership of Bradley’s key role in aiding the faltering Eisen- the organization at a time when millions of hower during Operation Torch as well as his WWII combat veterans called upon it, follow- prominent contributions to the invasion of ing rapid demobilization at the cessation of hos- Normandy and the race to liberate France. tilities. Pulling from an array of primary source Throughout, Ossad remains objective, stressing material associated with Bradley’s military ca- ______Arkansas Review 49.2 (August 2018) 146 reer including West Point records and docu- racial inequality in American education” pre- ments from the US Army Center of Military cisely because of how the public memory of Lit- History, Ossad succeeds in making a case that tle Rock has been shaped over six decades (p. Bradley deserves a spot at the table with more 3). Political “moderates” have manipulated a well-known WWII commanders. Where victorious narrative of social progress by Ossad’s work misses the mark is in developing pedestaling the tokenism of passive resistance the personal characteristics of the man—in and white “tolerance,” while ignoring full black adding that human element that elevates a bi- inclusion that was the actual goal of civil rights ography into something other than a mere activists, as well as erasing the voices and recitation of accomplishments. For readers in- agency of black actors in the 1957 event and terested in General Bradley’s public career and ongoing attempts to make education equitable in WWII in general, Ossad’s book is a must in Arkansas’s capital. In their efforts to literally read. Those who want to truly understand whitewash the ongoing legal and social battle Bradley’s private thoughts and actions would be that is the story of the recently-state controlled better served looking elsewhere. Little Rock School District, Devlin observes that the city’s civic and political leadership --Keith M. Finley have been able to blame lingering educational inequity as products originating within Little ststs Rock’s black community, rather than credit six decades’ worth of ad- Remember Little Rock. By Erin ministrative practices Krutko Devlin. (Boston: Univer- and persistent white intransigence for the sity of Massachusetts Press, 2017. gulf. Remember Little Pp. xi + 189, notes, index. $28.95, Rock is a welcome— paper) and timely—addition to the ever-evolving story of the city’s failed That the personal is political is a cliché attempt to truly inte- that possibly should not be employed by a writer grate its public school of any discipline, and yet that standard is espe- system, in an era when cially applicable in the current political climate traditionally marginal- where identity and individual truths have been ized voices are demanding that their experi- elevated as matters of policy and strategy. Inte- ences and memories be used as a platform to gral to personal experience is memory, yet disrupt self-serving revisionism. memory rarely belongs solely to a single person, Devlin structures her work along the as it is certainly shaped and colored by external chronology of the Little Rock saga. She details forces that ultimately render intimate memories the competing definitions of “successful inte- as political moments in time. This understand- gration” as conceived by the city’s black ac- ing of memory is the cornerstone of Erin Krutko tivists led by Arkansas’s NAACP chapter Devlin’s splendid work, Remember Little Rock. president, Daisy Gaston Bates, and the families Her volume examines the well-worn subject of and children who participated or tried to par- city’s Central High School integration attempt ticipate in integration beginning in 1956, from the provocative stance that the tri- against the members of the Little Rock School umphant “rhetoric of the ‘post-civil rights era’” Board, Superintendent Virgil Blossom, and wildly deviates from the “reality of persistent “‘moderate” white actors who only accepted the ______Arkansas Review 49.2 (August 2018) 147 bare minimum of token compliance with the “accentuate the positive” and “don’t complain Supreme Court’s 1955 mandate of “all deliber- too much” about the abuses daily meted out by ate speed.” She deftly argues that these self- segregationist students, faculty, and adults out- identified moderates immediately began side of Central High School (p. 168). Devlin’s laboring to separate moderation from resistance most important chapter, “Resisting Historical and showcases that these efforts included pri- Erasure,” focuses on the determined efforts of vate and public citizens. Throughout the 1950s the surviving members of the Nine, their fami- and after the crisis, US Representative Brooks lies and supporters, as well as Little Rock’s black Hays argued the virtues of tokenism as “more community and black activists nationwide, to effective” than actual systemic integration that counter the heretofore accepted narrative of would have included sending white children to white moderates as any kind of allies and re- all-black institutions, and hiring black and center black actors as aggressive agents in their white faculty and administrators to lead neigh- own history. borhood schools. The effect of tokenism on Other important observations in this im- black Little Rock remained a “secondary con- pressive study concern Little Rock’s grudging sideration” to moderates seeking to paint white acceptance of limited desegregation (never ac- Little Rock in the best possible light (p. 76). tual integration) after 1970, and the successful Devlin further notes that for forty years after attempts to implement new forms of segrega- 1957, city, state, and national leadership partic- tion in the post-civil right era that have been ipated in a concerted effort to amplify white supported by city, state, and corporate leader- memoirs and voices of the integration attempt ship, and have been mimicked in cities across that overwhelmingly asserted that massive, vi- the United States. Court-mandated busing olent resistance or general intransigence to begat resentment and gave birth to “school black bodies in white spaces came from outside choice”—the preferred term for twenty-first agitators. Indeed, Daisy Bates’s memoir, and century white parents who want to avoid send- writings and interviews from the Little Rock ing their children to the majority-black schools Nine (Melba Beals Pattillo, Minniejean Brown- that white flight wrought, but who also want to Trickey, Elizabeth Eckford, Ernest Green, Glo- imagine themselves as crusaders for their chil- ria Ray Karlmark, Thelma Mothershed Wair, dren, rather than complicit participants in Terrence Roberts, Jefferson Thomas, and Car- mechanisms designed to keep public education lotta Walls LaNier) remained the lone black separate and unequal. Imagination and memory voices that received any credence regarding the are the beating heart of Remember Little Rock. era, until historians began earnestly examining Devlin’s work is essential reading for anyone and publishing work on the depths of black Lit- looking to understand the continuing educa- tle Rock’s civil rights activism after 2000 (p. tion crisis in Arkansas’s capital. 99). Devlin argues that even Bates’s and the Nine’s words were manipulated for propaganda --Misti Nicole Harper efforts by successive Presidential administra- tions to positively spin Little Rock as evidence ststs of the on-going evolution of American democ- racy, to specifically counter Communist govern- Out in the Rural. By Thomas J. ments’ charges of US hypocrisy. Importantly, Ward Jr. (New York: Oxford Uni- she also highlights recent and frank discussions from members of the Little Rock Nine regard- versity Press, 2016. Pp. vii-xxv + ing the media training they received from Bates 170, bibliography, index. $34.95, and NAACP activists as the crisis unfolded— hardback) ______Arkansas Review 49.2 (August 2018) 148 in Jackson and Washington, DC. When Arkansas Representative French H. Jack Geiger was the Center’s guiding Hill declared support for community health force. A northern physician, he was influenced centers during the congressional budget debate by South Africa’s rural community health in early 2018, he was addressing a well-estab- movement. Called a “crazy man” by an exasper- lished feature of what has passed for social wel- ated US Surgeon General official, Geiger fare in the modern United States. However, worked with the Medical Committee for community health Human Rights formed in the context of Free- centers have a com- dom Summer (p. 5). Becoming the Center’s plex history that defies first director in 1966, he faced steep opposition the popular notion from Mound Bayou’s white elite plus resistance that they are merely within the black community. Believing that dispensaries for the meaningful civil rights and community health down-and-out. In Out were linked, he saw healthcare in socio-eco- in the Rural, Thomas nomic terms. J. Ward writes about Geiger hired black social worker John the Tufts-Delta Health Hatch to run an outreach program with Bolivar Center, which came County blacks (the first black law student at the into being at a time University of Kentucky, Hatch had briefly when social tensions taught high school in Arkansas). The pair con- and hopes for a better society went side-by-side. structed the Center’s governing structure, com- Ward’s thesis is that community health posed of a network of “health associations” run centers were forgotten accomplishments of the by county residents. Concerns handled in- civil rights movement and the War on Poverty. cluded childcare, education, housing, hunger, Inspiring thousands of other American commu- unemployment, and voter registration. nity health programs, the Center was a “radical To the Center’s founders, the key to effec- assault on both . . . medical and social status” tive healthcare service was a better physical en- in the deeply conservative Mississippi River vironment. Black Alabaman Andrew James Delta (p. 170). The Center illustrated the per- supervised digging new wells to extract clean sistent tension between social reformers and ground water for county residents. His sanita- half-hearted government support. Committed tion division eradicated diseased vermin, picked to serving all people barred from private med- up garbage, and improved housing. This was a ical service in majority African-American Bo- “microcosm” of the War on Poverty in the sense livar County, Mississippi, founders struggled to that ambitious goals were undermined by poor maintain a truly community-run clinic. This financing (p. 109). L.C. Dorsey, a black Missis- mission clashed with the state’s racist power sippian voter-rights organizer, took over the structure and ingrained local superstitions. The Center’s farm co-op in 1967. She was frustrated Center’s relations with the Office of Economic by the “plantation mentality” many members Opportunity were difficult. Favoring hierarchi- had (p. 132). cal management, the OEO ended its grants in Mound Bayou’s “social and professional iso- 1972. lation” led to high turn-over in the Center’s Ward stresses the Center’s early leaders and small staff (p. 89). Although one-third of pro- their backgrounds, local activities, and ap- fessional staffers were black, non-natives were proach to healthcare. Other chapters deal with often deemed outsiders by area residents. Hatch environmental factors, the health center’s co- left in 1971 to finish his doctorate in public operative farm, and relations with authorities health at Chapel Hill (Geiger had left two years ______Arkansas Review 49.2 (August 2018) 149 earlier to head the community health depart- Marx in the Great Depression South (Jackson: ment at SUNY-Stonybrook). University Press of Mississippi, 2014) and Beat- Center healthcare providers discovered a rix Hoffman’s Health Care for Some: Rights “rampant . . . malnutrition crisis” in Bolivar and Rationing in the United States since 1930 County (pp. 72, 74). Many patients received (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012). prescriptions for food. At the risk of losing OEO Ward addresses themes raised by Greta DeJong funding, the Center backed class action lawsuits in her essay in The War on Poverty: A New and other protests of shocking living condi- Grassroots History, 1964–1980 (Athens: Uni- tions. A three-month-long protest in Rosedale versity of Georgia Press, 2011). sensitized the town’s white elite to problems ex- The story of the Tuft-Delta Health Center perienced by black residents. The Mississippi parallels the larger narrative of US social wel- State Sovereignty Commission retained a spy fare policy, from equivocal commitment in the to monitor the protests; nothing incriminating 1960s through rejection under neoliberalism. about the Center was found. We also learn that despite official capricious- Bolstering the goal of eradicating hunger, ness, advocates of social justice will always be the short-lived farm co-op was the Center’s with us, particularly in the most difficult cir- “most creative and ambitious venture” (p. 134). cumstances. Ward makes an important contri- Deemed essential for self-sufficiency since Mis- bution to the interest in poor people’s sissippi’s racist welfare program was meant to institutions and to the fullness of southern his- fail, the co-op drew on various funding sources tory. and was administered by Mississippi State Uni- versity consultants. However, problems getting --Anthony B. Newkirk locals to be farmers led to increased mechaniza- tion and production of cash-crops. Ward ob- ststs serves that the Mississippi Delta had a tradition of farm co-ops and community gardens from the Willie Morris: Shifting Interludes. 1930s. Edited by Jack Bales. (Jackson: Ward substantiates his findings with inter- views he conducted and oral histories on file University Press of Mississippi, with the Southern Poverty Law Center. He also 2002. Pp. xiii + 209, contents, in- consulted manuscript collections at Meharry troduction, index. $25, paperback) Medical College (Nashville, Tennessee), the Mississippi State Archives, and Mississippi This collection of essays by renowned au- State University. There are criticisms. Regarding Governor thor Willie Morris was first published in 2002, William Waller’s veto of OEO funding in 1972, shortly after I first encountered his classic, Ward does not elaborate on a probe of the Cen- North Toward Home (1967). Having just com- ter the American Public Health Association pleted an undergraduate history degree and ac- “was tasked” with conducting (p. 158). Com- cepted the responsibility of teaching history to parisons with other community health centers inquisitive young minds in rural Alabama, I would have been useful (in fact, Center veteran found an evocative power in his words. There Christian Hansen subsequently worked at a were stories about ourselves and our region that community health center in inner-city Newark, we must know, share, and teach. I eventually New Jersey). Out in the Rural is yet a good made time for Morris’s Yazoo (1971) and The complement to Fred C. Smith’s Trouble in Courting of Marcus Dupree (1983). The former Goshen: Plain Folks, Roosevelt, Jesus, and shaped my understanding of school desegrega- ______Arkansas Review 49.2 (August 2018) 150 tion in the Deep South, while the latter influ- parlors and the little churches and the road- enced my pedagogy for a course in sports his- houses and the joints near the closing hour” (p. tory. Morris wrote beautifully. I could converse 125). with him through these texts. He was someone Here we certainly find an enduring legacy, to emulate. even as we quibble over the persistence of an However, almost twenty years after his identifiable South, a region with its share of death, these essays do not always resonate in negative qualities, too. These essays show how the same way. In a world of #BlackLivesMatter Morris moved comfortably among lettered and and #MeToo, his nostalgic commentary on race unlettered, rich and poor, black and white. He relations and women appears naïve at best. We wrote most poignantly on universal topics that may forgive a twenty-year-old Morris for de- touch us all: aging and death, love and loss, scribing the main street of his Mississippi home- family and friends, or the comforts of home. town in 1955 as “the epitome of civilization,” Readers grieve with him at his grandmother’s noting “the warm laughter of the Negroes,” and funeral, sense the pain of his divorce, or laugh hearing in it only “the raw joy of living” (p. 90). at youthful indiscretions. Morris could tell a But what are we to make of a prurient descrip- story, and his stories captured complex emo- tion of an Ole Miss student in a 1989 essay, one tions that are not easily conveyed. of several women who “served to encourage the In Morris’s work, one also detects hints of Socratic method” (p. 184), or a 1995 essay that the regional defensiveness and even profes- employed a favorite timestamp of patriarchy: sional insecurities that sometimes haunt south- “back in those days when you could call a erners or writers in general. Does a country boy woman a girl and get away with it” (p. 59)? from Mississippi really belong at the University The current scholarly inclination to dimin- of Oxford or in New York City or editing ish southern distinctiveness in recent US his- Harper’s? The answer is yes, of course, if he tory further complicates how we might wants to be there, but Morris was not always remember Morris. Was he a great southern certain. He was just vulnerable enough to invite writer who ascended sympathy from readers and just arrogant enough to the heights of the to know that he was remarkably gifted. New York literati, du- One occasionally senses that Morris liked tifully interpreting the to name-drop. Readers discover brief encoun- South(s) for the self- ters with Alger Hiss and Richard Wright, for absorbed Yankee, or example, alongside deeper friendships with Tru- was he more simply a man Capote, James Jones, and Winston Groom. great writer who hap- However, one of the more captivating essays in pened to hail from the collection, “Mississippi Queen,” profiles Eu- Mississippi? In a 1986 dora Welty, and one cannot imagine a biogra- essay, Morris antici- phical essay with more charm and deference. It pated this reassess- is the latest piece in the collection, originally ment of southern published in Vanity Fair a few months before identity by asking if the South still existed. It Morris’s untimely death in 1999, and it embod- did, he concluded, through some persistent ies so much of what readers liked about his qualities—all positive in his estimation—that sense of place and ironic humor. cannot be found at the country club or college Jack Bales, a fan and academic acquain- seminar but are readily apparent at the “the ball tance of Morris, compiled this collection, ini- games and the funerals and the bus stations and tially sifting through approximately 700 articles the courthouses and the bargain-rate beauty with Morris and choosing 90 that best repre- ______Arkansas Review 49.2 (August 2018) 151 sented the scope of his work. Bales eventually leridge, and writers and philosophers Buddha, pared that number down to the 32 essays in this Calvin, Aristotle, and Lu Shun, not to mention book. They are organized around the themes of indirect references to Shakespeare, Ptolemy, people, places, and memories. Essays are Blake, and others, one might think the poems arranged chronologically within those three would be inaccessible to those not well-versed categories, though readers must refer to the in these traditions. Not true. The mundane and publication page for original publication infor- physical both work alongside the loftier con- mation, including dates. This volume is the templations, containing and expanding them. largest anthology of Morris’s work and covers The result is a well-crafted poetic voice that, his entire career, making it an excellent intro- grounded in the Delta region, speaks from rea- duction to the author’s writing. son, emotion, knowledge, and speculation. The ideas travel in the way of water—when old --Barclay Key water meets new, the distinction is blurred, and the lap-lapping moves both forward and back ststs simultaneously. The poems begin with age and end with birth, May Day. By Gordon Osing. (New which may seem York: Spuyten Duyvil Publishing, like a reversal of the natural order of life, 2017. Pp. 28. $10.00, paper) but since the cycle is not broken by the There is much to admire in Gordon Osing’s order—the last 2017 contribution to the world of poetry, May poem ends with a Day. Essentially a sectioned love poem to art beginning—one and to life, the brief collection contemplates does not discern a the way each is perceived and enacted, or literal line between “staged,” embracing the artifice of creation and old water and new. Thus, the literal and self as the poems travel through their sequence. metaphoric—and time as both entity and In doing so, the work exhibits the “courage to process—not only share boundaries, they erase love past all meaning” (p. 9). Contemplative them. yet worldly, accessible yet allusive, lofty yet Individually, as it should be, each poem grounded, these poems subtly evoke the sonnet stands on its own, but each is informed by and form in line length (most are 14 lines, with the has a dialog with its companions. I am appre- exception of numbers 3 and 6, which are 15), ciative of the book’s structure, which reminds and reflect the sonnet’s goals of contemplation me of a photograph album. Each poem depicts and musicality but without direct end rhyme or a scene, a moment in time as both stasis and standard meter. process, and reflects upon art as life. The The self and the mask (the observing self) speaker tells us: “Let contemplation take the and the theaters of existence and of creating art place / of time without pretending to cancel it” are featured in this collection. The book begins (p. 9). Later, he states, “Writing conjures truth and ends with epigraphs from Yeats, and by as circles / of redundancies,” which does not di- length alone could be considered a chapbook. minish but rather celebrates the repetitions, By virtue of density, I would not characterize akin to flipping through an album of wordless the collection as such. It is a slim volume only images to live in the life depicted for a moment to the fingers. With direct allusions to poetic (p. 26). One is the whole and one is the one masters Yeats, Berryman, Keats, Frost, and Co- that makes the whole. Structurally, the opening ______Arkansas Review 49.2 (August 2018) 152 line of poem 1 sets the tone of a speaker who to be surpassed by trickery, disassembling, lives both in the physical world and its more ab- art. (p. 15) stract counterparts: “What is May Day to a Aside from what else is going on here, I am geezer?” (p. 9). He refers to himself as a “boy taken by the layers of the word “border” in lines codger,” and twice he states, “I feel neither old five and six: lines drawn to claim; lines drawn nor young but both” (pp. 20, 24, 25). Hence, to delineate; the self a border, as in one who re- “Time is both thorns and rose” (p. 18). sides in the self; and the self a border to the self Another strand of the collection’s braid is . . . the spiraling is captivating. the idea of the self as both player and observer- We are all borders in our lives, living on recorder, in life as well as art. This duality is time we do not own, crafting selves and observ- contemplated and celebrated. The self exists in ing the craft, and anticipating the hope and ex- time, while a second self observes, records, and istence in the blank page. Gordon Osing’s book contemplates. In some sense the creating self reminds us of this, thoughtfully, intelligently, creates the creator, as esoteric as that may self-effacingly, and engagingly. sound. One often has trouble separating these selves or knowing which is which. The second --Lynn DiPier self is the actor, the writer, the artist—or is it the first? Does it matter? When Osing’s speaker ststs contemplates this doubling, there is often ref- erence to the art of writing, or how we write Water Tossing Boulders: How A ourselves. In poem 4 we are told Family of Chinese Immigrants Led Acting, choose a role, then try to get out of it. More binding than the First Fight to Desegregate pathology it is. But you bind yourself. Schools in the Jim Crow South. By The lines and all the right gestures Adrienne Berard. (Boston: Beacon become right. (p. 12) Press, 2016. Pp. ix-xiii + 194, af- I appreciate the multiplicity of the word “lines,” representing lines of writing, speaking, and oc- terword, acknowledgments, notes, cupation, and possibly one’s own borders, simul- oral histories and author inter- taneously. views, works cited, index. $26.95, I’ll mention some other areas that resonate for me. The beginning of poem 10 reflects a vi- cloth) sion of hope in the art and artifice of both cre- ating and existing: “An empty page is better Water Tossing Boulders explores how the than most things” (p. 18). The reversal of Lums, a Chinese im- empty as a positive illustrates much of what migrant family, strug- Osing does throughout. Finally, the first half of gled to survive in the poem 7, and this may just be the work I admire Jim Crow South and most: fought against Chi- A being that speaks for the silences nese exclusion from is escaped from the borders of the flawed white public schools self, in Mississippi during whose fictivity is his gift for speaking, the 1910s and 1920s. who loves the blank pages of the screen. Adrienne Berard, the So, a life without borders: done. Unless author of the book, ar- the self has a way of being a border, gues the Lums filed a ______Arkansas Review 49.2 (August 2018) 153 lawsuit that “would become the first U.S. uses Sanborn maps, weather reports, newspa- Supreme Court case to challenge the constitu- pers, interviews with descendants, and photo- tionality of segregation in Southern public graphs and letters of the Lum family to vividly schools” (p. x). recreate life in the early 1900s. Under her de- The book is divided into two parts. Part I piction, readers can have a more comprehen- focuses on Jeu Gong Lum’s experiences of mi- sive understanding of the social, economic, and grating to America. He entered the United cultural environment of the Jim Crow South. States from Canada, found a job in Mississippi, At that time, racial segregation was rampant. and married Katherine Wong there. Later they Klansmen lynching black men and black pris- had three children, including Martha and oners being tortured or worked to death were Berda. Martha and Berda had been attending very common. These details reflect how hard it Rosedale’s public school in prior years, but due was for the Lums to carve out a niche to survive to the changing polices, in the fall of 1924, the in such a hostile environment, but they still had principal told these two girls they could no the courage to fight against discrimination. longer attend this school because the school Berard’s book is enriched with historical was for whites only. Katherine refused to send context, but Berard failed to prove Gong Lum her children to the black school, so the Lums v. Rice (1927) was a case that led the first fight decided to file a lawsuit. They hired Earl to desegregate schools in the South because the Brewer, former governor, a Democrat and Lums and their lawyers had no intention to lawyer to represent their case in court. Brewer break down white supremacy and fight against built the case around Martha. segregation. Instead, they asked for Chinese in- Part II describes the Lum family’s legal bat- clusion by proving Chinese degrees of white- tles. At first, a local judge ruled in favor of the ness. As Brewer argued, “these two races Lum family and ordered the board of trustees to (Chinese and Japanese) furnish some of the admit Martha into Rosedale’s segregated white most intelligent and enterprising people. They school. One month later, Rosedale’s school certainly stand nearer to the white race than board filed an appeal. Soon, the decision was they do to the negro race” (p. 105). In other overturned by the Mississippi Supreme Court. words, they had little interest in challenging Judge George Ethridge, a steadfast segregation- segregation because they relied on claiming ist, ruled in favor of excluding Martha from racial distance and distinction from African Rosedale’s white school. Frustrated by the re- Americans to win the lawsuit. sult, the Lum family prepared to appeal to the Furthermore, Berard argues the Lums’s case U.S. Supreme Court, but Brewer decided to could “have brought one of the greatest civil hand the case to James Flowers, a novice who rights victories in American history” (p. 120) if had little experience with these kinds of cases. Brewer did not abandon it, but what Brewer did Flowers also abandoned the case, so the Lum to win over the judges was to admit the legiti- family had to fight for themselves. Eventually, macy of segregation in the first place and then the Lum family lost, and “without the partici- discuss Martha’s strong personality. Therefore, pation of any person of the Negro race, the Berard’s claim is invalid. Brewer’s racism ulti- Supreme Court rendered a decision that sanc- mately prevented him from becoming the tioned racial segregation within all public lawyer who could overturn segregation. schools” (p.137). Berard’s writings gives this case a new life, Berard’s well-researched book reveals the and Water Tossing Boulders indeed provides in- Lum family’s untold story, and the story of how teresting insights about Chinese immigrants’ the Lums fought against discrimination is al- experiences in the Jim Crow South during the ready compelling. Furthermore, Berard skillfully 1910s through the 1920s. Under Berard’s depic- ______Arkansas Review 49.2 (August 2018) 154 tion, the Lums’s long fight against Rosedale’s what become recurring motifs of instinct, wild- white public school breaks the typical stereo- ness, domestication, and control. type of Chinese being silent and passive. How- “Pyramid Schemes” follows a woman who ever, Berard fails to prove the Lums led the first is unhappily married and cheating on her fight to desegregate schools in the South. In ad- chicken-farming husband. Having divorced and dition, she puts comparatively more attention remarried her husband once already, Tonya to Brewer’s history than to that of the local Chi- continues to look for an escape from the nese communities, so their reactions to the case chicken farm, financial scrimping, and the and whether or not the case affected or shaped boredom of married life. She begins an affair local Chinese people’s lives remain unclear. De- with Donald, a car salesman who also longs for spite these drawbacks, audiences may still ben- economic freedom and escape from domesticity efit from this book because Berard paints a vivid and a pregnant wife. The story’s title refers to a picture of the Jim Crow South and retells a supper club investment scheme in which Tonya nearly forgotten story of Chinese immigrants. had ventured $1000 and scored $8000 in one night. Tonya’s search for something more satis- --Doreen Yu Dong fying than a loveless marriage, though, repre- sents a metaphoric pyramid scheme, illusory ststs and unsustainable. In “Retreat,” Dee, the young woman from Unnatural Habitats & Other Sto- “Animal Lovers” reappears. When the story ries. By Angela Mitchell (Santa opens, Dee has moved in with Gary and his Rosa, CA: WTAW Press, 2018. Pp. bobcat, Bobbie, and 190. $16.95, paperback) she has brought her two unmanageable Angela Mitchell’s debut short story collec- dogs with her. Gary tion consists of seven loosely connected stories lives in a rural area and set in the Arkansas and Missouri Ozarks. As an loves the animals. As eighth generation native of southern Missouri, in the first story, we Mitchell bears witness to a region being re- have access only to shaped by diminished economic opportunities, Dee’s thoughts. “Gary drugs, crime, and fragmentation in families and was her boss and it was communities. The story titles are both simple probably bad for the and brilliant: evocative of theme and multilay- relationship to see each other twenty-four hours ered. a day, seven days a week, but it was better than The collection begins with “Animal being on her own” (p. 81). Dee’s mother, Lovers,” in which a young woman divorces her Glynn, appears in this story, first through need- husband and demands custody of their two ing Dee as company and a sounding board but dogs. The dogs had simply been a diversion later through visiting her at work, whereupon from her husband’s desire to start a family. Once she buys a dog from Layton, the owner of the Dee has the dogs, she realizes her mistake and company. An uneasy tension lies below the sur- wants to get rid of them. They, and she, end up face of the relationship between Layton and being taken in by Gary, her boss at the insur- Gary. Dee knows that the men use the insur- ance company where she works. Gary’s place in ance business as a cover for selling drugs, but the country is already home to parrots, lizards, she doesn’t know any of the details and the snakes, and a tame bobcat. The story introduces business doesn’t follow them back to Gary’s ______Arkansas Review 49.2 (August 2018) 155 rural home. When Bobbie goes missing, how- loners. The stories don’t evoke great passions ever, and the two dogs soon after, Gary becomes yet underlying them are deep longings—for a distracted, wondering what has happened to the better lover, more money, the past, connection, animals. The story takes an ominous and unex- and understanding. Thus, Mitchell creates em- pected turn involving Layton, his new associ- pathy for her characters in their bleak environ- ate, Gary, and even Glynn. The meaning of ments, and she makes us question what natural “retreat” becomes apparent only in the end. habitats really are for these characters. “This Trailer is Free” makes a departure The beautiful cover image of a bobcat in a from the other stories. It is only one of two sto- button down sweater highlights the natural/un- ries with first person narration, and that narra- natural dynamic that undergirds the entire col- tion is confessional, conjectural, and at times lection. The reader who selects the book based confrontational. It begins with the supposition, on the intriguing cover will not be disap- “Let’s just say that we never robbed the bank.” pointed. The stories are supremely well crafted, The unnamed narrator traces her way backward the characters memorable, and the meditation to what led to her speaking to the reader from on place compelling. It is a stunning debut from behind prison bars: life in a dingy trailer in Dal- Angela Mitchell. Buy it, read it, reread it, and las, an opportunistic and mean-spirited share it. It’s that good. boyfriend, a taste for Oxycodone after an injury in the Army, a string of men, the birth of her --Janelle Collins son, and ultimately an extended story of the year her father bought a trailer, packed up the Ststs family, and moved them from Arkansas to Alaska for what he hoped would be profitable The South in Color: A Visual Jour- work in a canning factory. They hadn’t lasted nal. By William Ferris. (Chapel and on the way home, the trailer got two flat tires. After taking what they could fit in the car, Hill: The University of North Car- the narrator’s father taped a piece of paper to olina Press, 2016. Pp. xi-xx + 121, the trailer. “In all caps, he’d written THIS 103 illus., foreword by Tom TRAILER IS FREE. ‘Let somebody else take it,’ Rankin, acknowledgments, se- he said to me. ‘I give up’” (p. 138). The narrator returns to those words at the end of the story lected bibliography. $35, cloth) stemming from different circumstances but evoking the same shame and defeat. Longtime fans of Bill Ferris’s work will be The stories in Unnatural Habitats are pri- pleased to see the third in a series of books that marily told from a limited omniscient perspec- have chronicled his ethnographic research from tive. We have access to the central character’s the 1960s into the 1990s. The South in Color, thoughts but often see or know more than the though perhaps more idiosyncratic in approach character him or herself. Mitchell’s characters than the previous two, is visually beautiful and are realistic, sometimes likeable, sometimes not. contains, in five chapters, a sumptuous collec- She doesn’t explain her characters to readers, tion of his previously unpublished color photo- but rather she allows readers to see how the graphs from the same periods covered by Give characters understand, and misunderstand, My Poor Heart Ease and The Storied South. themselves. They are teachers, car salesmen, in- Focused on the places that gave rise to his surance adjusters, farmers, business owners, drug work, the book is idiosyncratic in the very best dealers. They are husbands, wives, fathers, sense: it carries with it the echoes of the per- mothers, sons, daughters, in laws, but especially sonal that have made Ferris such a vital con- ______Arkansas Review 49.2 (August 2018) 156 tributor to the field of taken, just like older, white workman Cecil Southern Studies. To Crosby, who peers, arms folded across his chest powerfully evoke and gaze slightly askew, out from under the place, he begins with sweat-stained brim of his cap while standing his own early life on against a corrugated tin wall (p. 52). “The Farm” (chapter Chapter two, “Portraits,” chapter three, one): the Ferris family “Buildings,” and chapter four, “Handmade home environs in rural Color,” all move away from the farm and out Mississippi that shaped onto the road before Ferris returns in the last him, along with the chapter “Roads Traveled.” Again, we’ve met people who lived there and molded him. Read- some of those folks before, but to see them in ers of the previous works will see the same lov- color propels us across the gap of time: Otha ingly detailed attention paid to color Turner (p. 57), Sergeant Webb (p. 65), and photographs of area residents, many of whom Aden Fisher White (p. 50) are personal fa- appeared earlier in black and white. The pho- vorites in this category. Likewise, after being tographs of the Rose Hill Church congregants given significant space and voice in Give My stand out, as do those of black and white farm- Poor Heart Ease, seeing artist and musician workers: one in which three workers take a James “Son” Thomas (one of many standout in- break while seated on a pull-behind mowing terviews and recordings from the first book) deck leaps from the page with its immediacy (p. with one of his sculpted heads cradled in the 31), and those of Ferris’s own family members crook of his arm (p. 95) is truly a delight. As pull us into his early life. We can practically Tom Rankin notes in his foreword, these pho- smell the freshly cut hay. tographs “help us see with fresh eyes where This intimacy is by design. “This book ad- we’ve already been . . . to re-imagine even the dresses my complex relationship with the most familiar of past places” (p. xviii). South,” Ferris writes. “I bring an appreciative The same quality of re-visioning and re-vis- yet wary eye to its people and their history. . . . iting is true even of those we haven’t met be- I feel the South’s power and presence in deep, fore, like the aforementioned Pecolia Warner, intimate ways” (p. 1). Both Pecolia Warner’s but also in many of the unidentified subjects, portrait (p. 47) and she with her quilts (pp. 86- such as the young white fireworks salesman (pp. 87) embody this contrast: the former a close-up 62-63) who graces the front cover, the silver of her frank, cautious, and careworn visage, the sleeves of his Dallas Cowboys jacket popping latter brightened by her art and her slight smile against the bright yellow lettering of the hand of pride of work. Ferris’s subjects seem obviously painted sign for his wares behind him; the wary and appreciative of their photographer in African American street actress, coyly peering their turn, and repeatedly the two-way gaze be- sidelong out from under her hat (p. 44); or the tween subject and lens is deeply moving. The unidentified pony rider (pp. 66-67) slouching eyes of Nora, a neighbor’s child” clinging to the comfortably back on the rug that serves as his hip of Louvennia Willis (p. 58), stare blankly saddle against the haunches of his mount. And from her countenance, halfway intimidated by it occurs in the photographs of buildings, like the camera yet comforted by the older woman’s Busburgers Restaurant (p. 74) and S.M White presence. Three unidentified African American & Son Crossroads Store (pp. 70-71); of land- men at a farm auction on the facing page (p. scape (Field near Arlena’s Soul Food, p. 106); 59) offer viewers a similar emotive experience, and of both everyday things and objet d’art: the comfortable with themselves and the situation battered white station wagon of a watermelon yet perhaps a little leery of having their picture vendor (p. 102) as well as Theora Hamblett’s ______Arkansas Review 49.2 (August 2018) 157 folk art painting of Hubert Hamblett, eyes lit- Especially when placed alongside the audio and erally shining, figure radiating light (93). video discs that accompanied the first two The main attraction of The South in Color, books, The South in Color vivifies both Ferris’s thus lies in seeing this material brought to life youth and his ethnographic research with a vi- in a way transcriptions of field recordings and tality that is remarkable, charming, and disarm- grey scale print reproductions can’t entirely ac- ing. It deserves its place on the shelf with the complish on their own. In that sense, this book others and readers will love perusing all three might best be seen as a companion piece to the as a set. earlier ones. Those unfamiliar with Ferris’s pre- vious works in this series would perhaps be bet- --Marcus Charles Tribbett ter served starting with either Give My Poor Heart Ease or The Storied South; but what a ststs warm, vibrant, and charming companion it is.

Contributors

Jeffrey Alfier’s recent books include Fugue for a Janelle Collins is Professor of English in and Chair Desert Mountain, Anthem for Pacific Avenue, and of the Department of English, Philosophy, and The Red Stag at Carrbridge: Scotland Poems. His World Languages at Arkansas State University. She publication credits include Copper Nickel, Midwest is former General Editor and current Managing Ed- Quarterly, The Carolina Quarterly, and The Mc- itor of Arkansas Review. She is the editor of Defin- Neese Review. He is founder and co-editor of Blue ing the Delta: Multidisciplinary Perspectives on the Horse Press and San Pedro River Review. Lower Mississippi Delta (2015).

Kenneth Barnes is the author of Anti-Catholicism Lynn DiPier is Associate Professor of English at in Arkansas: How Politicians, the Press, the Klan, Southern Arkansas University in Magnolia. Her and Religious Leaders Imagined an Enemy, 1910- poems have appeared in The Midwest Quarterly, 1960 (2016) and several other books and articles in The Laurel Review, Water~Stone, Weber Studies, Arkansas history. He is Professor of History at the and elsewhere. University of Central Arkansas. He is currently working a book about the Ku Klux Klan in Doreen Yu Dong is a PhD student at Arkansas State Arkansas. University in the Heritage Studies program. Her dis- sertation direction is towards Chinese immigrants’ Robbie Borrello is from New Orleans where he cur- experience in the South. She currently works at the rently works as a high school English teacher. As an Johnny Cash Boyhood Home, one of ASU’s heritage individual who grew up playing and loving music, sites, as event organizer and tourist interpreter. his affinities drew him to poetry that mirrors the same rhythmic styles that have always surrounded Monic Ductan’s writing has appeared in Shenan- him, namely jazz and the blues, and it has been in doah, Water~Stone Review, Cold Mountain Re- these idioms that he has modeled most of his writ- view, storySouth, Tahoma Literary Review, and ings. He is a graduate of Hendrix College in Conway, several other journals. She is the winner of the 2016 AR with a BA in English Garth Avant Fiction Award, and a finalist for the 2017 Reynolds Price Short Story Award. She lives ______Arkansas Review 49.2 (August 2018) 158 in Tennessee. brary science while drifting from one entry-level job to another. After graduating from the University of Keith M. Finley, PhD, is Assistant Professor of His- Tulsa, he moved home to Cooweescoowee County tory at Southeastern Louisiana University as well as where he now lives in a century-old farmhouse on Assistant Director of the Center for Southeast the outskirts of Radium Town, a decaying resort Louisiana Studies. once famous for its mineral springs. The last remain- ing bathhouse, though no longer operational, is still LaDawn Lee Fuhr is a PhD student and graduate as- visible from his upstairs window sistant in Heritage Studies at Arkansas State Uni- versity. Fuhr’s background includes a career in media Mitsutoshi Inaba was born in Kure, Hiroshima, management, marketing, communications, and gov- Japan. He earned a PhD in ethnomusicology from ernment. Fuhr is the chairman of the Arkansas State the University of Oregon and is the author of two Museum Advisory Council and holds an MPA from blues biographies: Willie Dixon: Preacher of the Georgia Southern University and a BFA from Blues (2011) and John Lee “Sonny Boy” Arkansas State University. Williamson: The Blues Harmonica of Chicago’s Bronzeville (2016). He currently teaches Japanese Laura Goodman lives and writes in Boulder, Col- language and culture at Clarksville High School and orado. Her work has appeared in a number of quar- Austin Peay State University in Clarksville, Ten- terlies, reviews, and anthologies, among them: nessee. Cream City Review, South Dakota Review, Cross- currents, Worcester Review, Other Voices, Hard George Kalamaras, former Poet Laureate of Indiana Love, etc., with work forthcoming in Fiction South- (2014-2016), is the author of fifteen books of poetry, east. including Kingdom of Throat-Stuck Luck, winner of the Elixir Press Poetry Prize (2011). He is Profes- J. Todd Hawkins is a professional editor who writes sor of English at Indiana University-Purdue Univer- and lives in Texas. He is the author of Ten Counties sity Fort Wayne, where he has taught since 1990. Away (Finishing Line Press) and What Happens When We Leave (winner of the William D. Barney Barclay Key is Associate Professor of History at the Memorial Chapbook Prize). His blues haibun have University of Arkansas at Little Rock, where he is appeared in AGNI, The Bitter Oleander, The currently teaching courses on recent US history. His Louisville Review, Bayou Magazine, and elsewhere. favorite band is the Drive-By Truckers, and he has He holds an MA in Technical Communication, run at least two miles every day since August 1, loves the blues, and nightly loses to his wife at Mor- 2011. tal Kombat while the kids sleep. Robin Kozak’s writing has appeared previously in Misti Nicole Harper, PhD, is an instructor in the De- Crazyhorse, Field, The Gettysburg Review, Gulf partment of History at the University of Arkansas. Coast, Hotel Amerika, Poetry Daily, Poetry North- Her current book project, And They Entered as west, Witness, and other publications, and her Ladies: When Race, Class, and Black Femininity awards include two Creative Artist Program grants Clashed at Central High School, examines intersec- from the city of Houston and the 2016 Sandy Crim- tionality and middle-class black women’s specific ac- mins Prize for Poetry. An authority on antique and tivism as the catalysts for massive resistance. estate jewelry, she currently is at work on Berkowitz, a collection of short fiction. Dylan Henderson, born in a trailer parked on a for- mer gravel quarry, has lived his whole life within the Sharon LaCour is a piano instructor living in a small borders of the Cherokee Nation. An avid reader, he town in western Wisconsin. She grew up in New Or- spent much of his childhood studying literature, but leans and her newly completed novel, Dolores Cou- at the age of sixteen, he dropped out of high school villon, is set there and in Cocodrie, Louisiana in the and, after earning his GED, enrolled at the local 1920s. Her work has appeared in the Xavier Review community college. Over the next decade, he would and the Embark Literary Journal. earn advanced degrees in history, literature, and li- ______Arkansas Review 49.2 (August 2018) 159 Carl Moneyhon, PhD, is a specialist in the history He is the founding chair of the Communication and of the American Civil War and the South and is Films Studies Department at Le Moyne College in widely published in the field. His work has been sup- Syracuse, New York. ported by the National Endowment for the Human- ities, and he recently received one of the first Marcus Charles Tribbett is General Editor of College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences Arkansas Review and Assistant Professor of English Summer Fellowships for Research. He is a Fellow of at Arkansas State University where he also teaches the Texas Historical Association. He is working on for the interdiscplinary Heritage Studies doctoral a book on the connection of war-time experience program. He has published or forthcoming essays on and developed identity among Confederate soldiers. classic (Memphis Minnie) and contemporary (Mem Shannon) blues singers. His most recent essay, Anthony B. Newkirk is Assistant Professor of His- “Three Williams and a Subversive Text: Collabora- tory at Philander Smith College. He is currently tion, Communal Agency, and Resistant Identities in working on the lives of Grace and Lee Lorch, civil Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom (1860),” rights activists in Little Rock during the late 1950s. was published in Southern Quarterly in 2017.

William H. Pruden III is the Director of Civic En- Colin Woodward became Editor of the Lee Family gagement and College Counselor at Ravenscroft Digital Archive on August 31, 2015. Dr. Woodward School in Raleigh, North Carolina. A history major got his undergraduate degree in history and religion at Princeton University, he earned a JD from Case from Trinity College in Hartford. He completed his Western Reserve University, as well as master’s de- MA and PhD from Louisiana State University, grees from Wesleyan University and Indiana Uni- studying with Charles Royster, who is an authority versity. His stints as a legislative assistant to both a on “Light Horse Harry” Lee, the Revolution, and the state senator and a US Congressman have informed Civil War. For three years, Dr. Woodward was an his over thirty years as an educator where he has archivist at the University of Arkansas's Little Rock taught American history and government at both Center for Arkansas History and Culture. Before the collegiate and secondary levels. In addition, he that, he worked at Smith College and the Virginia has done presentations and published many articles Historical Society. His first book, Marching Masters: on history and politics. Slavery, Race and the Confederate Army during the Civil War, was published in 2014 by the University C. R. Resetarits has had work recently in Jelly of Virginia Press. He is writing a second book on the Bucket and Chicago Quarterly Review; out now in importance of place, family, and history in the life Chattahoochee Review and Confrontation; out of country singer Johnny Cash. soon in So to Speak and December. She has been nominated twice for a Pushcart Prize, in 2016 and 2017. Her poetry collection, BROOD, was published by Mongrel Empire Press in 2015. She lives in Faulkner-riddled Oxford, Mississippi.

Michael Streissguth has written and produced three documentary films and published eight books, in- cluding Johnny Cash: The Biography, which have been widely cited and favorably reviewed in The New York Times, The Guardian, Wall Street Jour- nal, The Boston Globe, The Washington Post, and many other publications. A regular contributor to Rolling Stone, his work has also appeared in venues such as The Washington Post Magazine, The Jour- nal of Country Music, The Irish Times, Salon, Mojo, Living Blues, the Public Broadcasting System (PBS) and the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC). ______Arkansas Review 49.2 (August 2018) 160