Book Review: Our Southern Home

In Our Southern Home, Waights Taylor, Jr. masterfully intertwines an unlikely mix of historical fact, social commentary, memoir and family biography into an amazingly coherent book that defies fitting into a specific genre.

This powerful book is filled with the nuances of segregation and deep-seated hatred from "Scottsboro to Montgomery to Birmingham." The author skillfully threads the history of three people who were 18 years old in 1931 into an enticing read.

Clarence Norris, one of the Scottsboro Nine, Rosa Parks, the woman who, with a simple act of civil disobedience, jumped the modern Civil Rights Movement forward, and Waights Taylor, the author's father were "Three young people, all eighteen years of age, each calling the South home--a young black man, a young white man, and a young black woman with three very different life stories and outcomes."

Our Southern Home is thoroughly researched and indexed. The book adds well-researched personal depth to other scholarly works that cover the tragic events of the Scottsboro Nine through Civil Rights Movement and beyond.

The author ends the volume with the words, "I am haunted by my past." Readers, too, will be haunted by this surprising blend of scholarly work and personal and family narrative.

An excellent read--well worth its purchase price and a "keeper" to boot.

Our Southern Home written by Waights Taylor, Jr.

Paperback: 430 pages
Publisher: McCaa Books (October 7, 2011)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0983889201
ISBN-13: 978-0983889205

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