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    Graceland, At Last: Notes on Hope and Heartache From the American South
    Graceland, At Last: Notes on Hope and Heartache From the American South
    Graceland, At Last: Notes on Hope and Heartache From the American South
    Ebook304 pages5 hours

    Graceland, At Last: Notes on Hope and Heartache From the American South

    By Margaret Renkl

    4.5/5

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    About this ebook

    “In this luminous collection” a New York Times columnist “delivers smart, beautifully crafted personal and political observations” on the American south (Minneapolis Star Tribune).

    Margaret Renkl’s New York Times columns offer readersa weekly dose of natural beauty, human decency, and persistent hope from her home in Nashville. Now more than sixty of those pieces have been brought together in this sparkling collection.

    “People have often asked me how it feels to be the ‘voice of the South,’” writes Renkl in her introduction. “But I’m not the voice of the South, and no one else is, either.” There are many Souths—red and blue, rural and urban, mountain and coast, Black and white and brown—and no one writer could possibly represent all of them. In Graceland, At Last, Renkl writes instead from her own experience about the complexities of her homeland.

    In a patchwork quilt of essays, Renkl also highlights other voices of the South. Teenagers who organized a youth march for Black Lives Matter. An urban shepherd whose sheep remove invasive vegetation. Church parishioners sheltering the homeless. Throughout, readers will find a generosity of spirit and deep attention to the world, human and nonhuman. From a writer who “makes one of all the world’s beings” (NPR), Graceland, At Last is a book for Southerners and non-Southerners alike.

    “E.B. White suggested that newspapers cover nature as eagerly as commerce. . . . Renkl . . . seems like a belated answer to White . . . [crafting] graceful sentences that White would surely have enjoyed.” —Wall Street Journal

    “Margaret Renkl’s perspective feels like a guiding light . . . No matter where you’re from, column after column, Renkl will make you feel right at home.” ?Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherOpen Road Integrated Media
    Release dateSep 8, 2021
    ISBN9781571317575
    Author

    Margaret Renkl

    Margaret Renkl is the author of Graceland, At Last and Late Migrations, which was a Read with Jenna/TODAY Show book club selection. She is a contributing opinion writer for The New York Times, where her essays appear weekly. Her work has also appeared in Guernica, Literary Hub, Proximity, and River Teeth, among others. She was the founding editor of Chapter 16, the daily literary publication of Humanities Tennessee, and is a graduate of Auburn University and the University of South Carolina. She lives in Nashville.

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    • 4/5
      If you read Renkl's wonderful LATE MIGRATIONS, you might be curious about this book. It's not as good. This is a collection of short essays, originally published in the NYT. Some are very good, some are slight and don't seem worthy of a book. (although all would be nice to read in a newspaper!). It doesn't hold together as a book.I was happy to read it, however, for the sense of what it feels like to be a blue voter in a red state, and to love the south, but hate the legacy of slavery. Also, Renkl's nature writing is lovely.

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    Graceland, At Last - Margaret Renkl

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