The Down South B-Side

An illustration of a corner of a porch with a rocking chair on it in a field of grass. To the right of the porch is a Magnolia Tree. Written over the scene is "Down South B-Side" in a yellow-orange cursive.

Down South is feeling the sunshine on your face while the humidity silently suffocates you. Down South is the rush as you speed down gravel roads while contemplating what got you on these roads in the first place. It is home to so many concepts, beautiful and wonderful, damning and illusory. The blue skies and deep-rooted, impossible-to-ignore religious standards. Bull-riding and artificial pageantry. Female joy and female suffering. These opposing sides of the South cannot exist without each other.

Sometimes the illusions are reality. Most often they are not.

I asked Daily Arts writers to reflect upon the art that they feel brings out just that: the best – and the worst – of being Down South. 

Daily Arts Writer Sarah Patterson can be reached at sarahpat@umich.edu.

An illustration of a cowboy riding a bull.
Houston’s Eight Second Empire
An illustration of Ethel Cain.
Religion and Americana: What does it mean to be Ethel Cain Vinyl?
An illustration of Dolly Parton surrounded by Magnolia flowers and a female sex symbol.
The Death of the Southern Belle