Brooks Blevins lectures frequently after the publication of his many studies of the Ozarks.
5-Star Review of Brooks Blevins new book by Leland Payton
National and regional identities may not have disappeared but what defines a people and their relationship with place has undergone evolution. Colorful identities are challenged by the homogenization of modernization. In rural regions, more than in urban, lifestyle relates more to geographic specificities. A rural place’s reputation may not have been created by—or accurately reflect the perceptions of, its natives. Academic studies of the Ozarks are scarce compared to other regions of the U.S. Tourism and popular culture have largely shaped its image, but not always falsely, Blevins concedes.
Brooks Blevins’ latest take is Up South in the Ozarks. Subtitled, Dispatches from the Margins, Blevins challenges the overall accuracy of the place’s most dominant symbol, the hillbilly, but acknowledges that the definition of a region needs to account for its clichés. Curiously, many Ozarkers accept cartoonish rustic depictions. Professor Blevins melds academic expertise from many disciplines— an appreciation for folklore, familiarity with both literature and journalism—with the personal, insightful observations of a native son. His encyclopedic geographic and historical knowledge is delivered with humor and a talent for metaphor. Throughout he contrasts and compares this Midwestern river-cut uplifted plateau with both the Deep South and the Appalachian Mountains.
Missionaries and writers descended on the southern highlands of Appalachia before they came to save souls or describe the more isolated Ozarks. In the chapter, “A Time Zone Away and a Generation Behind,” he analogizes the Ozarks to a younger sibling: “You were never first, never original, never completely yourself. Even at school, your teachers knew you as your big brother’s little brother. If that’s your story, you know how the Ozarks feels.”
His chapter, “The South According to Andy,” makes the case that the 1960s TV show set in a fictional mountain south small town was a portrait well received by Ozarkers: “Andy’s South was not the South. It was a South. … It was a projection of something quite southern, even if not a complete portrait of the South.”
Dr. Blevins doesn’t idealize the Ozarks. He confronts the idea that the mountain south was exempt from the past racial prejudices that characterize the Deep South. In “Revisiting Race Relations in the Upland South,” he admits his earlier position based on that premise was wrong: “But the equation of a small Black population with a comparative degree of racial harmony has not always appeared so self-evident to scholars and observers of the South.” He follows facts down unmapped, rocky trails no matter where they lead.
A generational lag in scholarship he believes may be closing: “In 2010, Missouri State University established the region’s first Ozarks Studies minor for undergraduates. Five years later, the University of Arkansas Press launched a monograph series in Ozarks Studies. (They published this book). We may never be first in the Ozarks, but we get around to it eventually. Such is the life of a regional little sibling.” Blevins is on the board of the Ozarks Studies Institute, an initiative of the Missouri State University Libraries. Dr. Blevins also teaches classes on Ozark history at MSU.
Up South in the Ozarks seeks the nuanced realities of a large, misunderstood region that is paradoxically both romanticized and maligned. Brooks Blevins cherishes the Ozarks and believes its story is worthy of an honest telling, quirky, droll, and marginal as its realities often are.
Available from the University of Arkansas Press, Amazon.com, and Barnes & Noble.
Real photo postcard, circa 1920. “Taking his medicine in the Ozarks, Anderson Missouri.” Note the long gun on the ground by his feet. This hunter was thirsty!
