OXFORD AMERICAN

We're a non-profit, quarterly magazine dedicated to exploring the complexity & vitality of the American South.

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Photographer Matthew J. Brown investigates the fluctuating story of land use in his home state of Tennessee, using the lens as a tool to frame examples of a “nation in transition, one which fosters a culture built on convenience and comfort through familiarity and pleasant consumer experience.”

View more: https://oxfordamerican.org/eyes/the-culture-of-convenience

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The Oxford American and Stax Museum of American Soul Music are excited to announce a launch party of Oxford American’s Memphis Music Issue + Vinyl LP on Wednesday, December 4, 2024, at 6:00 pm.

Come hang out with editors and contributors, visit vinyl listening stations, and enjoy cocktails by Old Dominick, food by Bain’s BBQ, and a museum scavenger hunt.

The event is free and open to the public, but reservations are required. Grab your tickets here!

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I slammed the brakes at every stop sign, in love with the feeling of falling forward and being caught.

Oxford American | Freezer Songs

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Tyre Nichols Had a Beautiful Life

A Memphis-born writer reflects on his spirit, his gruesome death, his family, and the burning left in the rest of us

By Zandria F. Robinson

“They have stolen our capacity to see what came next. But we still witness, speculate about and imagine what it would have been here on earth. And when he throws open the red curtain, we peek into the parallel world where Tyre skates through his fantastic afterlife.”

Earlier this year, contributing editor Zandria F. Robinson offered a poignant meditation on Tyre DeAndre Nichols: his life, his spirit, his gruesome death, his family, and “the burning left in the rest of us. Read the full essay at: oxfordamerican.org/web-only/tyre-nichols-had-a-beautiful-life

Photos by Andrea Morales for MLK50

This story is a co-publication with MLK50: Justice Through Journalism, a nonprofit news outlet based in Memphis with the mission to report on the intersection of poverty, power and policy, and to bear witness to movement making and lived experiences. “We hope this story bears witness to not only Tyre Nichols's life but the experiences of Black and working class Memphians affected by the city's history of problematic policing,” MLK50 says. “We ask that after you read it, you join us in reimagining public safety by asking yourself, ‘What makes you feel safe?’

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Newsstand Day!

Our Fall 2024 Southern Lit Issue is here, offering a literary feast of new stories that resonate and linger. 🍂 Explore themes of loneliness, legacy, lost innocence, and chance encounters in Issue #126, available now at your local bookstore or on OA Goods!

Shop now: https://www.oxfordamericangoods.org/collections/good-reading/products/issue-126-southern-lit-issue

COVER: Scene from Alligator (1980) (detail), 2019, acrylic and mixed media on canvas by Thomas Deaton © The artist. Courtesy Lemieux Galleries, New Orleans. Deaton’s work will be on view from November 2 to February 2, in the exhibition Prospect.6: The Future is Present, The Harbinger is Home, in New Orleans.

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The Oxford American’s 32-year archive is a complex tapestry of stories from an equally complex region. Among its threads is this raw footage of Barry Hannah, shared by John Oliver Hodges as a part of our Spring 2011 tribute to Hannah, who had passed away the year prior.

Hannah, ever the iconoclast, appears here unfiltered - much like his prose. While we 

don’t endorse his on-camera choices, or admissions of tax evasion, we present this unvarnished glimpse of a literary legend for your consideration.

Viewer discretion advised. But then again, discretion was never really Hannah’s style, anyway.

Curious for more? Dive into Hodges’ full essay about his personal history with Hannah, “The Least Lukewarm Dude You Were Likely to Meet,” at the link below.

https://oxfordamerican.org/magazine/issue-72-spring-2011/the-least-lukewarm-dude-you-were-likely-to-meet

Plus, find the full video of Hannah and Hodges’ excursion on our Youtube channel: https://youtu.be/m6Kgj-cVXq4?si=rTE69Zj0b_HEJPG5

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KEEP THE OA ROOTED & RELEVANT

🎉 Wow, y'all! We've reached nearly 10% of our $20,000 goal in just 4 days! 📚 The Oxford American has been capturing the heart and soul of the evolving South through powerful storytelling for 32 years, and we're not stopping anytime soon. But we need your help to keep this legacy alive. Donate at OxfordAmerican.org/give2024 and spread the word by sharing this post or snapping a photo with your favorite OA issue(s). Tell the world what the OA means to you, and you might just get featured on our socials! 🙌

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“Old-fashioned hallucinations can come from fever dreams or through psychotropic means; in the digital era, hallucinations are generated by missteps with AI that lead into perpetuating tangents. How can we shield ourselves now?” – Wendy Atwell (via Oxford American | Kelly O’Connor’s Pop Culture Hallucinations)

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Love thy neighbor, and yourself, and Beyoncé.

– Colm Simmons, editorial intern, Unpacking COWBOY CARTER

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All artwork courtesy Dianna Settles and MARCH

(via Oxford American | The Entwining of Matter)

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The world does not need genre cops.

– David Ramsey, Unpacking COWBOY CARTER

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For your viewing consideration: the cover of the Summer 2024 OutsideIssue!

This new issue features Melissa Alcena’s “Ellie” (2020) courtesy of TERN Gallery. Alcena is a Bahamian portrait and documentary photographer, and her book, “People of the Sun,” is included in KGP’s new ten-volume photobook box set “LOST IV.”

Pre-Order here: https://www.oxfordamericangoods.org/products/summer-2024-outside-issue

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The air conditioning wetted a heavy fog on the window panes. The grass outside was dewed, soggy. I yearned to lie on a beach and let the sun roast the outer layer of my skin, to burn off the last two years of my life and peel away the hope I had for a future life with certain people and certain places, a kind of christening. 

(via Oxford American | The Book of Flowers)

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I’m proud that we have fashioned, over the past few years and multiple forms of media, a body of work that has chronicled and illuminated the Black roots, and future, of country. If Black country is having a moment because of Beyoncé, we are here like always to guide and probe and make the necessary connections. To reveal antecedents and carve out a pathway for a future in which we’re all able to shine our brightest, sing our loudest.

(via Oxford American | Black Country: A Love Letter and Living Archive)

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At nineteen, Cory Jones moved from New Hampshire to Georgia and found comfort in the punk rock scene. Surrounded by some of the freshest sounds in Southern punk—including bands like Upchuck, Ladrones, and The Sporrs—Jones put his camera to work and, over five years, photographed the misfit musicians inhabiting Atlanta, specifically the East Atlanta area, who provided the soundtrack to his newfound life in the city. At the same time, he also found solace in the quiet, mellower moments afforded by his slow-paced Southern landscape. In his new series “The Kids Will Be All Right,” Jones collects a set of black-and-white photographs that exist on the border of calm and chaos. By pairing stoic portraits and images of neighborhood landmarks with unfiltered rock & roll realism, Jones captures the emotional seesaw of one’s early twenties, with all its noise, beauty, and downbeats in between.

(via Oxford American | Loud Quiet Loud)

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Donna Tartt: An OA Retrospective

Oxford American has been a window to the American South for over a quarter-century and has racked up quite a roster of contributing authors and artists. So, why not feature some of our past and present OA contributors whose work has proved foundational to the story of our magazine? First up, Donna Tartt, an audacious literary figure who has found a new generation of ardent readers with the surge of “dark academia” aesthetics on the internet. 

Born in Greenwood, Mississippi, Tartt has always connected intimately to the South. She is perhaps best known for her debut novel, 1992’s The Secret History. Her sophomore effort, The Little Friend (2002), took readers on a journey into the heart of a Southern family grappling with an unsolved murder. Over a decade later, she returned with The Goldfinch (2013), which earned her the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Tartt first attended Ole Miss, where her talent caught the eye of Willie Morris, another OA contributor and venerable Southern literary figure. Morris would serve as a friend and mentor for years to come.

Now, you may be asking yourself, what exactly is dark academia? In a 2023 article for English Studies, Prof. Simone Murray concisely defined it as a “vibrant online subculture centered upon readers’ performances of bookishness.” Think leather-bound books, neogothic architecture, and tweed jackets. Tartt’s The Secret History could be considered a sacred text. Although Tartt attended Ole Miss and Bennington College in the 1980s (and writes of that era), the narrative has struck a chord with younger generations over thirty years later. Case in point: #DarkAcademia has over 2.3 million posts on Instagram and over 5.2 billion views on TikTok. 

And yet, some of Tartt’s contemporary fans probably have no idea of the treasure trove that is the OA archives! Here is a list of the various Tartt contributions featured in our issues. Do you have these on your shelf? 

Issue 2: Basketball Season: Requiem of a Mississippi Cheerleader Issue 4: “True Crime” (poem)  Issue 6: In Melbourne Issue 11: Murder & Imagination Issue 26: The Belle and the Lady Issue 29: Tribute: Willie Morris Issue 30: Spirituality in the Modern Novel Issue 41: Spanish Grandeur in Mississippi Issue 72: Tribute: Barry Hannah

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“Black artists must routinely contend with the pervasiveness of the white gaze within their works. That gaze seems to require they produce work that tells us something about racism or the legacies of slavery or the violence brought against Black bodies etc., etc.” - Tyler Isaiah Campbell (via Oxford American | Tammie Rubin’s Counter-Cartography)