The Deepest South of All

Starred review from June 1, 2020
Smithsonian writer Grant (Dispatches from Pluto) spotlights the complex cultural and political heritage of Natchez, Miss., in this entertaining and informative travelogue. A “racially divided” town that still strongly identifies with its Confederate past, Natchez presents itself as a bastion of tradition, yet also has a vibrant gay community, according to Grant. He notes the stark contrast between impoverished black neighborhoods and the opulent antebellum mansions for which the town is best known, and points out that Natchez once hosted the largest KKK rally in American history, yet voted not to secede from the Union during the Civil War. Grant profiles fascinating figures from the city’s past and present, including Mayor Darryl Grennell, a gay black man elected with 91% of the vote; 19th–century ship captain John Russell, who threatened to pull a riverfront gambler’s joint into the water with his steamboat; and William Johson, a freed slave who opened “a small empire of barbershops” catering to the city’s white elite. Readers will be enthralled by Grant’s lively prose and the colorful contradictions of this unique and haunted place. Agent: Lisa Bankoff, ICM Partners

July 1, 2020
An award-winning British travel writer and journalist tells the story of an unexpected, powerfully revealing visit to Natchez, Mississippi. Grant first learned about Natchez from Regina Charboneau, a native chef and cookbook author who invited him to visit her at the antebellum plantation home where she lived. As a resident of rural Mississippi, the author already knew that, like so much of the South, the city was a place where "beauty seemed inseparable from the horrors of the [racist] regime that created [it]." From the moment Grant set foot in Charboneau's home, it was clear just how deeply riven by racial issues Natchez really was. President of a "powerful and aristocratic" women's garden club in Natchez, the liberal-minded Charboneau had backed controversial changes to yearly historical reenactments (called "Tableaux") that called for the miseries of slavery to be depicted alongside heavily romanticized stories of plantation life. Yet other disturbing traditions remained--e.g., employing African Americans to work as servers in the antebellum museum homes that drove tourist interest in Natchez. Grant tells delightful stories about the ongoing skirmishes between garden clubs--dubbed the Hoopskirt Mafia--and such Natchez eccentrics as the man who resided in a local mental hospital for part of the year. But what makes this engaging narrative especially timely is the way the author interweaves his excursions with the fascinating, ultimately tragic story of Natchez transplant Abd al-Rahman Ibrahima, an African prince who was sold into slavery and bought by a Natchez resident in the late 1800s. Grant chronicles how one of Ibrahima's female descendants had played the role of his wife in a historical reenactment. This richly layered book offers a multifaceted view of the culture and history of an American city that, in its history, reveals the roots of the racial conflicts that continue to haunt the American psyche. An entertaining and thought-provoking memoir and sociological portrait.

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Starred review from August 1, 2020
Natchez, Mississippi, may just be the most eccentric of southern cities, and in a region that's home to such over-the-top destinations as New Orleans and Savannah, that's saying something. It's a land where hoop skirts and Confederate uniforms are still trotted out, where antebellum estates lure tourists and former quarters for enslaved people now serve as chi-chi B&Bs. Its fabled, fantastical roots run deep, a history that bears more than its share of ignominy, violence, and injustice alongside social traditions mired in tacky kitsch and tortured pageantry. British travel writer Grant immersed himself in Natchez lore and interviewed white society doyennes and descendants of the enslaved to offer a complete and completely engrossing historical and contemporary portrait of a city that once was a focus of both the Civil War and the Civil Rights movement. Grant deftly and pointedly juxtaposes anecdotes of garden club turf wars among the city's wealthy, white elite with appalling accounts of slave auctions, life under Jim Crow rule, and the continuing inequality still facing the city's Black residents. At a time when our country once again attempts to confront its systemic racism, Grant's potent examination of the confluence of white and African American cultures presents a timely overview of the source of many deep-seated misperceptions and struggles.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2020, American Library Association.)