First published 2007
This collection cannot be summarized as fiction since Red Clay Suite is poetry, not a narrative work with protagonists and scenes. Jeffers examines the American South as both promised land and nightmare, where race, gender, and ancestry intersect in complex ways. The poems build on her previous collections, The Gospel of Barbecue and Outlandish Blues, which used blues forms to investigate historical wounds and collective memory. Here she treats the southern terrain as a place of opposing forces, simultaneously offering salvation and destruction. The verses function as the concluding movement in her extended blues composition, providing the final measures that bring her musical exploration to its endpoint. The collection seeks resolution and healing after examining the tensions that define southern experience.
Genres: american-fiction, american, african-american, poetry
Vibes: emotional-atmospheric, intimate, lyrical, thought-provoking
Tropes: examination-of-tensions, resolution-and-healing
Setting: American South
88 pages · Paperback · Southern Illinois University Press