Nobody’s Home: Modern Southern Folklore is an online anthology of nonfiction works about beliefs, myths, and narratives in Southern culture over the last fifty years, in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. The project, created in 2020 by writer-editor Foster Dickson, collects personal essays, memoirs, short articles, opinion pieces, and contemplative works about the ideas, experiences, and assumptions that have shaped life below the old Mason-Dixon Line since 1970.
The editor of Nobody’s Home is interested in reviews that examine how beliefs, myths, and narratives in the South or about the South are presented in books and movies. Submissions of reviews will be considered year-round. The following lists of books and movies are ones that the editor would particularly like to see reviewed, so if a writer or scholar has read or seen one of these, a review would be appreciated. (See the Submissions page for more.)
Books (chronological by publication date)
The Twelfth of August (1971) by WR Morris
Good Old Boy (1971) by Willie Morris
The Mississippi Chinese (1971) by James W. Loewen
You Can’t Eat Magnolias (1972), edited by H. Brandt Ayers and Thomas Naylor
The Changing Politics of the South (1972) by William C. Havard
Another Look at the Twentieth-Century South (1972) by George E. Mowry
The Americanization of Dixie (1974) by John Egerton
reviewed by editor Foster Dickson
Issue Voting and Party Realignment (1977) by Donald S. Strong
In Search of the Silent South by Morton Sosna (1977)
reviewed by editor Foster Dickson
Fifteen Years Ago . . . Rural Alabama Revisited, published by the US Commission on Civil Rights (1983)
The Enduring South (1986) by John Shelton Reed
Whistling Dixie: Dispatches from the South (1990) by John Shelton Reed
*reviewer copy available
The Future of Southern Letters (1996), edited by Jefferson Humphries and John Lowe
Confederates in the Attic (1998) by Tony Horwitz
reviewed by editor Foster Dickson
The Southern Cross (1998) by Christine Leigh Heyrman
South to the Future (2002) edited by Fred Hobson and Edward L. Ayers
Rammer Jammer Yellowhammer (2004) by Warren St. John
*reviewer copy available
Dixieland Delight (2007) by Clay Travis
*reviewer copy available
The New Politics of the Old South (2009) edited by Charles S. Bullock III and Mark J. Rozell
The Myth of Southern Exceptionalism (2010) by Matthew Lassiter and Joseph Crespino
*reviewer copy available
Why the South Will Survive (2011) edited by Clyde N. Wilson
Dispatches from Pluto (2015) by Richard Grant
*reviewer copy available
Deep South (2015) by Paul Theroux
*reviewer copy available
The Browning of the New South (2019) by Jennifer A. Jones
The Long Southern Strategy (2019) by Angie Maxwell and Todd Shields
Navigating Souths (2020) edited by Michele Grigsby Coffey and Jodi Skipper
*reviewer copy available
Waste (2020) by Catherine Coleman Flowers
South to America (2022) by Imani Perry
The Southern Way of Life (2023) by Charles Reagan Wilson
Movies (chronological by release date)
The Liberation of LB Jones (1970) • WUSA (1970) • Brother John (1971)
Sounder (1972) • Deliverance (1972) • The Legend of Boggy Creek (1972)
Walking Tall (1973) • White Lightning (1973) • The Klansman (1974)
Conrack (1974) • Nashville (1975) • Gator (1976) • Ode to Billy Joe (1976)
Passion Plantation (1976) • Roots (1977, TV) • Smokey and the Bandit (1977)
Norma Rae (1979) • I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1979, TV) • Porky’s (1981)
Southern Comfort (1981) • Tank (1984) • The Beast Within (1982)
The Color Purple (1985) • Alamo Bay (1985) • Crossroads (1986) • Angel Heart (1987)
The Big Easy (1987) • Shy People (1987) • A Gathering of Old Men (1987, TV)
School Daze (1988) • Driving Miss Daisy (1989) • Steel Magnolias (1989)
Trapper County War (1989) • Forrest Gump (1991) • Fried Green Tomatoes (1991)
Mississippi Masala (1991) • Daughters of the Dust (1991) • Doc Hollywood (1991)
My Cousin Vinny (1992) • Dead Man Walking (1995) • Sling Blade (1996)
The Chamber (1996) • Bastard Out of Carolina (1996) • Rosewood (1997)
Eve’s Bayou (1997) • Traveller (1997) • Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil (1997)
The Apostle (1998) • Beloved (1998) • The Waterboy (1998) • A Lesson Before Dying (1999, TV)
Monster’s Ball (2001) • Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood (2002) • Radio (2003)
Love Song for Bobby Long (2004) • Because of Winn-Dixie (2005) • Black Snake Moan (2006)
The Secret Life of Bees (2008) • Alabama Moon (2009) • The Blind Side (2009)
Mississippi Damned (2009) • The Help (2010) • The Dynamiter (2011)
Beasts of the Southern Wild (2012) • Straw Dogs (2013) • 12 Years a Slave (2013)
Django Unchained (2013) • Selma (2014) • Free State of Jones (2016)
Sophie and the Rising Sun (2017) • Lost Child (2017) • The Green Book (2018)
Just Mercy (2019) • Queen & Slim (2019) • Where the Crawdads Sing (2020)
Miss Juneteenth (2020) • Uncle Frank (2020) • House on the Bayou (2021) • Alice (2022)
Sinners (2025)
Nobody's Home 