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

The Changing Politics of the South (1972) by William C. Havard

The Southern Way of Life (2023) by Charles Reagan Wilson

Issue Voting and Party Realignment (1977) by Donald S. Strong

Dispatches from Pluto (2015) by Richard Grant

The Twelfth of August (1971) by WR Morris

The Southern Cross (1998) by Christine Leigh Heyrman

Why the South Will Survive (2011) edited by Clyde N. Wilson

Whistling Dixie: Dispatches from the South (1990) by John Shelton Reed

The Enduring South (1986) by John Shelton Reed

Waste (1977) by Catherine Coleman Flowers

The Mississippi Chinese (1971) by James W. Loewen

The Americanization of Dixie (1974) by John Egerton

The Long Southern Strategy (2019) by Angie Maxwell and Todd Shields

The New Politics of the Old South (2009) edited by Charles S. Bullock III and Mark J. Rozell

Confederates in the Attic (1998) by Tony Horwitz

Movies

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)

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 Color Purple (1985)

Crossroads (1986) • The Big Easy (1987) • Angel Heart (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)• 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) • Mississippi Damned (2015)

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)