Suburbs, Civil Rights, and Southern Identities

Abstract

This chapter argues Walker Percy’s Love in the Ruins (1971) and Alice Walker’s Meridian (1976) portray a post-South in which “southern” is not defined by geography but by sensibilities appropriated by the Cold War thinkers and the culture industry. Walker’s Meridian reveals the interconnectedness between characters’ regional backgrounds, racial identities, and roles as activists within Civil Rights movement. These connections are mediated by television, as it broadcasted for the entire US the struggles for equality that occurred mainly in the US South. Love in the Ruins is a satire about suburban American and its politics in the wake of the Civil Rights Movement, as well as a plea for political moderation. Percy’s novel also forecasts the further fracturing of America through the culture wars into red states and blue states. Walker’s and Percy’s visions of the US South show communities measured by how their values measure up against Cold War visions of American-style democracy.