TRANSCRIPCIÓN AUDIO INGLÉS

“The American South”

We can think of the south as at one time both the most american and the most
unamerican part of our nation. It's the most American because it was here that
figures like Thomas Jefferson shaped the nation state in writing the Declaration of
Independence and the Constitution. It's in the south that we see deep roots of
family, religion and patriotism. But it's also in the south that we see that most
unamerican institution of slavery, where one race enslaved another. It's also in the
south that we see the tragic scenes of violence during the civil rights movement in
the 1960s.
So the south offers both a beautiful and a nightmarish world as we enter it. As we
try to define the south, we can think of it in three ways. We can think of it as a
distinct geographic region, the old Confederate States that are mounted in a way
that really defines the south. We can also think of the south outside the south. For
generations, Southerners have left the region. Just as James Joyce said that he
fled the nets of family, religion and politics in Ireland. Southerners also have fled
those same nets to which we can add the net of race. They have moved
Mississippi Delta black families left the south and moved to Chicago. The writer
Richard Wright left Mississippi and moved to Chicago, then to New York and finally
to Paris. We see other riders, we see the Appalache and white families who moved
to Cincinnati. So there is a large Southern diaspora all over the nation and around
the globe.
And a third way of understanding the south is as a mythic reality. There is nowhere
in the world that the music of Beebe King, the Blues, the music of Elvis Presley,
rock and roll, the novels of William Faulkner, the plays of Tennessee Williams and
the fiction of Alice Walker; are not deeply loved and appreciated. It's almost like
Kudzu has encircled the globe as Southern culture has reached its arms around
this world and brought amazing and wonderfully rich experience to people in every
country.
So we can think of that region of States in the south. We can think of the
Southerners who've left the region and live in other places. And we can think of
Southern mythic worlds that are shaped by music, by literature and by art; when
we talk about the American South.