Where These Memories Grow:
History, Memory and Southern Identity

Edited by W. Fitzhugh Brundage 353 pp.

Where These Memories Grow: History, Memory and Southern Identity. Ed. W. Fitzhugh Brundage. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000. Pp. 353. Index, biographical glosses, occasional photos. $49.95 hardcover, $19.95 paper.

Where These Memories Grow: History, Memory and Southern Identity brings academic consideration to the workings of Southern "sense of place" and the diverse uses of memory in the creation of Southern American history narratives. The fourteen essays in this collection, including introduction and epilogue, make use of a clear historiographic approach, with some inclusion of literary and folklore material. The volume holds together nicely as a whole, and it includes studies on a variety of subjects from the Revolutionary period through the contemporary era, including African American history, women's history, and the politics of culture.

The collection opens with a comprehensive survey of recent, theoretically significant work on memory, collective identity, and related historiographies. Students in search of an overview will find this piece particularly useful. The main body of the volume is divided into four sections that cover the Old South; Confederacy and Reconstruction; the New South; and the Modern South. Of inequal lengths, the sections are accompanied by short introductions and commentary.

The first section, on memory uses in the pre-Civil War South, opens with a study by Michele Gillespie on Georgia artisans' successful invocation of Revolutionary symbols to advance their political status. The section concludes with a piece by Gregg D. Kimball on African Americans' creation of multi-vocal collective memories to form complex collective identities in antebellum Virginia. In the second section, the readers' attention is turned to the use of history in the interests of the Confederacy and Reconstruction. Anne Sarah Rubin considers Confederate citing of Revolutionary history to lend legitimacy to its cause. Kathleen Clark discusses African Americans' claiming of civic spaces and public displays in Emancipation Day parades to establish an independent political identity. The third section concerns itself with the invocation of the past in the New South, the period between Reconstruction and World War One. Catherine W. Bishir opens the section with a discussion of the politics expressed in monumental architecture in North Carolina. Laurie F. Maffly-Kipp examines African American historians' reinterpretation of race history, noting diverse national influences. John Howard's multi-sited historical essay closes the section with a consideration of silences and memory in an 1895 Mississippi murder, as well as queer academic identity of today.

The final section centers on memory and place in the Modern South. This section begins with an essay by Stephanie E. Yuhl on the personal politics that drove the incorporation of specific "public" memories into the early Charleston preservation movement. In the second piece, C. Brendon Martin explores the complex creation of regional Appalachian identity by both outsiders and locals through tourism, preservation, and folk revival efforts. W. Fitzhugh Brundage considers the multi-faceted development of historical memory in the "revival" of Acadian identity in Louisiana. Holly Beachley Brear discusses the intersection of gender, authority, and expected roles in the development of contemporary historical interpretations at the Alamo. The section concludes with an article by Bruce E. Baker on the diversity of memory of lynchings in South Carolina that parallels racial divides. The entire volume closes with an Epilogue by David W. Blight drawing attention to the inherent link between memory and political power.

Where These Memories Grow offers readers an informative set of historical snapshots that demonstrate how memory has been used to impart significance to the contemporary across the American South. The volume represents a fine collection of historiographic articles that grow out of contemporary concerns in North American scholarship on memory and history.

Veronica E. Aplenc