A Road Trip Through the South with Imani Perry

The moment I heard Pamela Paul interview Dr. Imani Perry on the New York Times Book Review Podcast, I knew I needed to listen to South to America. This book meanders its way through the South, touching on different locations around the region. Each chapter focuses on a different location, usually a city or general area, and Perry shares some of its history with her readers.

Perry asks her audience to approach the South from a more nuanced point of view, to investigate our preconceived notions, and to examine the things non-Southerners typically assume to be true in American history. Perry’s love for the South comes through in every chapter. She centers and celebrates Black Southern culture while also making the point that for the South to make positive change, white Southerners need to be prepared to roll up their sleeves and get to work.

As a Black woman with Southern roots, Perry’s journey through the South is deeply personal to her and she brings her readers along for the ride. Perry is an excellent tour guide, unafraid to confront the South’s obvious racist history as well as the more complex American narratives that proclaim the South as the root of all of the country’s ills.

As a long-time South Carolina resident, I recognized the ebb and flow of Perry’s audiobook narration. Her sentences and paragraphs blend together to create rhythm reminiscent of many Southern accents, and her approach to different topics feels more like an even paced meander through her subjects, not a precise rush to get to her points. You can hear the dialect in her voice, the way she says place names, and turns of phrases she uses. It all drips with the South in the most wonderful way.

Narrated by the Author

Viola Davis is one of my favorite actors, so when I heard she had a memoir and that she narrates the audiobook, I immediately put it on my “drop everything and listen” TBR. This memoir covers Davis’s childhood in Rhode Island and her introduction to acting. If you want a long trailer of sorts, be sure to check out the special on Netflix where Oprah interviews Viola Davis about the memoir.

Narrated by the Author

From the moment I heard about it, I knew I had to read Anjali Enjeti’s essay collection Southbound. But while the print edition came out in 2021,  it wasn’t released as an audiobook until April of this year. In Southbound, Enjeti shares her experience growing up in the deep south as a South Asian girl during the 80s and 90s. She performs the audiobook herself.

Narrated by the Author

In Kaikeyi, Vaishnavi Patel retells the queen’s story from the Indian epic the Ramayana. Kaikeyi grows up as a princess, but she feels stifled. She searches for new ways to gain her independence, and she finds it in magic. In her Instagram stories, Roshani Chokshi says that this was the book she was always looking for as a kid. Now it’s here!

Narrated by Soneela Nankani

Merit feels that her entire existence is focused around her husband and her two kids. While she loves them, she wants to carve a space out for herself. So she goes back to work at an architecture firm and meets Jane. The two women immediately hit it off, and Merit begins to feel her love life quickly becoming… complicated.

Narrated by Marin Ireland

Zia finds a magical dictionary. After her world seems to be changing way too fast, Zia decides to start erasing words out of the dictionary. But the results aren’t exactly what she was looking for. Full of the complex feelings that come when a tween’s world seems out of their control, Zia Erases the World is a heartwarming story of kids learning how to change and how to adjust to the changes around you.

Narrated by Cassandra Morris