Craig Brewer and Kara Walker

Abstract

The memory of a place and its history never dies, as the epigraph drawn from Toni Morrison’s Beloved observes. Morrison’s rendering of memory as an eternally powerful force is perhaps especially true of the American south, with its history of racial violence and segregation—whether during slavery or Jim Crow. The South is the “it” that Morrison insists will always be there waiting for all Americans, producing a rememory that like a vortex will pull Americans into that eternal place. For white American film writer and director Craig Brewer and African American visual artist Kara Walker, an unlikely duo for comparison, the segregated South is still there. Both artists attempt to produce art that make the history and memory of the South relevant for contemporary audiences. The themes and settings for both artists’ work resonate with moves in the academy to develop a literary and cultural studies subfield of new Southern studies, and the themes and settings also resonate with the reverse migrations to cities like Atlanta, Nashville, and Houston that were catalyzed in the late twentieth century. These intellectual and migratory developments inform Brewer and Walker’s investment in remembering the social, political, cultural, and economic history of the South in order to encourage contemporary audiences to “look south.”¹

Places, places are still there … it will be there for you, waiting for you … Because even though it’s all over—over and done with—it’s going to always be there waiting for you.

—Toni Morrison, Beloved