Southern Sin

April 14, 2014
Dorothy Allison's introduction to this nonfiction anthology about sinful interludes by Southern women may be the best thing about it. In four short pages she explains the pride behind the shame, the Southern story-telling tradition, and provides a lyrical description of sin. Six hundred essays were submitted to Creative Nonfiction magazine, 23 of which were selected for this collection. Most recount personal experiences in memoir-like prose, letting the writer's imagination, by way of first person narration, do most of the sinning. The anthology kicks off with "What Was Left," by Molly Langmuir; if only the mesmerizing quality of her ode to friendship were the norm rather than the exception. While many selections lack the excitement of Langmuir's, several worthy essays deserve mention. In Sheila Raeschild's "Circles of Light," the writer uses her mother's Yiddish slams on bad behavior as the mental backdrop for a long weekend of outrageous sex with a stranger in Miami. New Orleans is the star in "The On-Ramp," Amy Thigpen's exploration of the city's seductiveness. Gail Griffin channels the Brothers Grimm in "Out of the Woods;" the sexism and racism of the time and place turn the local woods into the dark and scary place that was the Medieval forest. Rachael Peckham is a fly on the wall in a golden couple's marriage in the ominous "A Lesson in Merging."

February 15, 2014
Attach the word sin to any other region of the countryPacific Northwest, Midwest, heck, even the Mid-Atlanticand it not only sounds wrong, it comes off as downright silly. But the South? Ah, now there's a match made in heaven. What's even more divine is that the sinners are all women: good ol' gals and Victorian renegades, sullen students and sultry soccer moms who suffer from an excess of emotion, a surfeit of sensuality. Gutkind (You Can't Make This Stuff Up, 2012) and Fennelly (Unmentionables, 2008) collect the works of 23 observant writers who catch obliging women in the act of doing outrageous things that run the gamut from slightly inappropriate to almost evil and somehow leave them feeling just right. When they trade their comfort zone for a danger zone, it's not that they're looking for love in all the wrong places; sometimes some good old sex will do. In each of these true stories, the search for identity and acceptance, attention and excitement manifests itself in myriad ways, but always with the heart of Dixie at its core.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)