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South to America

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What to expect

Brought to you by Penguin.

Many of us think we know the American South. We can rattle off a list of signifiers: the Civil War, Gone with the Wind, the Ku Klux Klan, plantations, football, Jim Crow, slavery. But the idiosyncrasies, dispositions, and habits of the region are stranger and more complex than much of the country tends to acknowledge. In South to America, Imani Perry shows that the meaning of American is inextricably linked with the South, and that our understanding of its history and culture is the key to understanding the nation as a whole.

This is the story of a Black woman and native Alabaman returning to the region she has always called home and considering it with fresh eyes. Her journey is full of detours, deep dives, and surprising encounters with places and people. She renders Southerners from all walks of life with sensitivity and honesty, sharing her thoughts about a troubling history and the ritual humiliations and joys that characterise so much of Southern life.

Weaving together stories of immigrant communities, contemporary artists, exploitative opportunists, enslaved peoples, unsung heroes, her own ancestors, and her lived experiences, Perry crafts a tapestry unlike any other. With uncommon insight and breathtaking clarity, South to America shows that in order to envision a more humane future for the United States, we must shift our focus below the Mason-Dixon Line.

© Imani Perry 2026 (P) Penguin Audio 2026

Critics Review

Any attempt to classify this ambitious work, which straddles genre, kicks down the fourth wall, dances with poetry, engages with literary criticism and flits from journalism to memoir to academic writing—well, that’s a fool’s errand and only undermines this insightful, ambitious and moving project…. An essential meditation on the South, its relationship to American culture—even Americanness itself…. This work—and I use the term for both Perry’s labor and its fruit — is determined to provoke a return to the other legacy of the South, the ever-urgent struggle toward freedom
The New York Times Book Review
In South to America, Perry shows readers that there is no one archetype of the American South, as she considers everything from immigrant communities to the legacy of slavery to her own ancestral roots
Time
Provocative, perspective-shifting…. Rendered in exquisite detail…. In this vibrant, revelatory book, Perry proves herself to be a radiant storyteller…like Zora Neale Hurston, Alice Walker, and Nina Simone before her
Oprah Daily
Perry is deft and disciplined, her efforts to situate the beauty, oddity, and terror that mark southern life are critical and compelling. As a travel writer, she embraces detours with an eye toward discovery…. Perry asks what it means to be tied to a ‘land of big dreams and bigger lies’ when one is committed to the pursuit of a truth that bursts the nation at its seams
Vulture
This history of the American South examines its subject from both personal and sociopolitical perspectives... [Perry] draws connections between the past and contemporary experience
New Yorker
Breathtaking…. Extraordinary…. In the realm of Southern letters it has no real antecedent. It is that fresh, that vital, that intellectually supercharged, that incandescent
Garden & Gun
[Perry] tells rich stories of place while ignoring the borders dividing disciplines and genres, weaving personal experiences with deep history, economics and cultural critique
Los Angeles Times
Engrossing…. [Perry] cannily frames her investigation as a travelogue, moving from Appalachia to the Upper South to the Deep South to outliers like Florida and Cuba…. The book’s pleasures are many…. Her vignettes spark off the page…. An immersive read
Minneapolis Star Tribune
“South to America marks time like Beloved did. Similarly, we will talk not solely of books about the south, but books generally as before or after South to America. I have known and loved the South for four decades and Imani Perry has shown me that there is so much more in our region’s fleshy folds to know, explore and love. It is simply the most finely crafted and rigorously conceived book about our region, and nation, I have ever read
Kiese Laymon
[Perry] focuses on a place and reflects on its distinctive relationship to the region’s history of slavery and racism, drawing on her own extensive knowledge of literature, music, art, and folklore, as well as her own family history
NPR's Fresh Air
Author Imani Perry
Narrator Imani Perry
Duration 16 hours and 32 minutes
Release Date
ISBN 9781837313679
Format Audiobook
Publisher Penguin Books Ltd
Genre Cultural studies: customs and traditions, Ethnic groups and multicultural studies, History of the Americas, Memoirs, Social discrimination and equal treatment
Availability AU, GB, IE

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