Southern Culture

The Southern Culture is the product of many (previous or foreign) cultural influences, which permit it to developed its own customs (art, literature, cuisine). Because of (or thanks to) conservatives which maintain this history (those literatures, foods, and so on), the southern culture is nowadays, probably America’s most distinct culture .

Art

--Theora Hamblett--

Theora Hamblett , one of the most famous artists from Oxford, Mississippi, is well known for her paintings of nature and social activities in a “child style”. Hamblett started painting without any consistent art background .She began after few art classes at Ole miss university in 1950. The first remarkable aspect in her art were that there wasn‘t neither proportionality nor perspective and that causes her art to be qualified as a naive artist. Nevertheless, thanks to her hard work, in 1954, Betty Parsons a New York art dealer began promoting her work successfully.

Theora Hamblett's style painting.

The assignment for this work was ,from a real picture of a landscape, make a painting using Hamblett's technique. As said previously,it was hard for two things: the fact of avoiding the perspective while we are inspiring on a picture and the leaves which was more complicated that it seems.

Literature

--William Faulkner: A Rose for Emily--

After the first reading it is hard to depict any deepness in William Faulkner’s rose for Emily except some suppositions on gossip in small villages which are not that unfounded and can make us doubt about the veracity of Emily’s dark secret. But When the text is studied further, we can perceive that W. Faulkner was effectively describing southern values in two supplementary ways; how were the old southern values and how does it try to involve.

First of all,thinking of Emily’s secret, we can see that there is a parallelism, an allegory between her situation and the southern values of this era. Her aristocrat background which represented idyllic and almost perfect persons hide the atrocity behind as well as the atrocity of racism that existed and was in the antebellum south.

Secondly,also by allegories, he shows a conflict between the old southern culture and the new one. For Instance in the old one, Emily didn’t have to pay taxes but in the new one she have to but she couldn’t accustomed her self. As Thomas Dilworth said, “Emily rebelled against Southern values and , by ending her relation with Homer Barron […] she conformed again Southern ones”

Food

Southern Food has a huge responsibility in the hegemony of the southern culture. Two main influences make the southern culinary culture so rich and diverse but also maintain a certain cohesion.

First, the American Indian influence from which came Corn,the main staple of Southern nourishment. One of the popular sayings "If it ain't fried it ain't cooked" shows the second impact f the American Indian culture on the southern dishes. The big majority of the dishes are fried and greasy

The second is the African American influence which is also called the soul food. African American had also played a primordial place in the southern cuisine.Most of the dishes consist in various vegetables and rice which is one of the staple.

Finally,conservatism,which is more a principle than an influence, permit to maintain a certain cohesion and not be influenced by neither contemporary northern people nor nowadays influences.

Mentioned in songs and so on, hot tamale is a part of this culinary tradition. It Appeared at least in the early part of the twentieth century in what is called “the most southern place on earth” (the Mississippi and The some of the US other southern states).There isn't one story about how tamale have been introduced in southern culture but as many as there is tamale recipes but as Tamale recipes vary from place to place and from person to person, it makes a lot of hypothesizes about their apparition. Ones of the most recurrent are that migrant laborers who were brought in the US from Mexico to work the cotton harvest brought it with them or that it is a from African Americans. Hot tamale stayed in southern culinary tradition (while a lot of things have changed) because of family tradition and public demand. Today, African Americans in the Delta are the primary keepers of the tamale-making tradition even if it is possible to procures almost everywhere.

For Marcie Cohen Ferris,Food reflects both [the] national and regional culture as surely as do the fields of art, folklore, geography, history and so on. It expresses tradition, memory and, particularly for southern culture, family,conviviality and all the other aspects that are deep encrusted in southern societies.

So, why, if food is that important, it is not studied as it is for music or religion for instance ?

For her the problem came from the fact that food is too usual and to implicated in our life. For her ,if it was as rare as art or music, it will be easier and more acceptable for people to study it.

By Hamadoun ISSABRE