book review – Snake & Tree

June 15, 2018June 15, 2018

Review: Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City by Matthew Desmond

Matthew Desmond, the academic behind the Eviction Lab, studies the housing crisis from within the home.

May 21, 2018

Be Ugly, Get Ugly

In the South, ugly is a behavior. “Quit being ugly and give me a hug,” or, my favorite, “be ugly to me and I’ll get you some ugly.”

February 21, 2018February 21, 2018

The Dead Become a Song: Review of Jesmyn Ward’s Sing, Unburied, Sing

Jesmyn Ward is the New South’s voice and artist. Her new novel is painful, melancholy, and beautifully wrought.

January 18, 2018

Review: Steven Stoll’s Ramp Hollow: The Ordeal of Appalachia

Stoll’s book of Appalachian history was released in November of last year. The responses are wild, so here’s mine.

October 1, 2017May 17, 2018

Review: Bastard Out of Carolina by Dorothy Allison

Shame, poverty, and gospel music. Dorothy Allison’s seminal work has it all.

September 19, 2017

Review: Nancy Isenberg’s White Trash

Nancy Isenberg’s history of poor white Southerners, aka “white trash,” is both necessary and exceedingly good.

I’m Rachel, a jaded twenty-something English grad student looking to tell some stories. Currently based in Nashville, born and bred in rural Alabama. Here you’ll find liberal political tirades, stories, book reviews, and folklore focused in on these lower Southeastern thirteen states.

The title, Snake and Tree, comes from the Alabama proverb that if you hang a dead snake in a tree it’ll bring rain. These stories are the snake. The rain is making peace with this broke South.