Book Review/New Stories from the South
New Stories from the South
A Literary Anthology
Edited by ZZ Packer
Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill
Quality Paperback $14.95
By BILL DUNCAN
The News-Review
In 1968, John A. Burrison edited an anthology for the University of Georgia simply called "Storytellers: Folktales and Legends from the South," in which he noted the exceeding talent of Southern writers and believed this gift of storytelling is unique to the South.
That being said, ZZ Packer proves Burrison’s point in a new literary anthology called "New Stories from the South," a collection of 20 stories from both well known writers and some fresh voices from the Deep South. ZZ Packer is a Southerner, a moniker she says is with a lower case "s" because she is from a border state, Kentucky. She writes "as backward as we (Southerners) sometimes portray ourselves, slipping behind a curtain of innocent and naive agrarianism, rural somnolence and sleepy vowels, the truth is that every awful and beautiful thing that has happened in America happened in the South first."
The publication of the first annual "New Stories from the South," dates back to 1968. This newest edition is scheduled for an August 12 publication date. While Packer edited this new anthology, she herself is better known for her prize winning book, "Drinking Coffee Elsewhere," a collection of her short stories. In her selections for the 2008 "New Stories from the South" the reader will feel the pulse of the South coursing through every one of the stories.
Of the 20 stories she selected for the antology it would be difficult to choose a favorite, but if forced to, I would select Amina Gautier’s "The Ease of Living," a story as fresh as today’s headlines, yet reminiscing about the values of living in the culture of the South. The story begins in New York where a mother is concerned over her teenage son and the drive-by shootings in her neighborhood. She cashes in all the Series EE bonds she’s saved since childhood to buy a plane ticket for her son, Jason, to spend the summer with his grandfather in Tallahassee, Fla. believing that distance would keep him safe.
It is a heart-warming story of how both the grandfather and the grandson bond. One of the best features of the book is that each story ends with a personal biography of the writers, including their own words about how the story came to be. In Gautier’s story, she reminisces about a summer in her own childhood "when school was out and we were free to do what we wished."
As Burrison explained in his 1968 anthology, Southerners have the gift of storytelling. Southern writers pack each story with metaphors and similes and weave delghtful Southern idioms in the vernacular of the dialog. No writers come up with better descriptions of the characters. Martha Piper, a member of the Roseburg Sunday Afternoon Book Club, described it best when she said: "Southern writers have such nutty characters to work with in the first place."
Packer’s selections have those characters, like in Gautier’s story when Jason tells his grandfather he is allergic to eating possum, only to have his grandfather do a pat down to check him for weapons and when Jason protests, the grandfather said: "You want to indulge in stereotypes, I can oblige you."
Packer admited she loves the South, but chose stories that reflected "a halfway house for conflict … telling tales of woe and our penchant for wrong choices." None of the stories in this volume gloss over the past, as Packer says, "we can’t pretend our land is filled with magnolias and dogwood and honeysuckle without remembering the past."
Southern writers, with their unique gift of storytelling, tell stories in this collection of the South as it is now.
(Bill Duncan is editor of The Senior Times. He also writes a weekly column for The News-Review. He is a native of Georgia.)