Issue 113, Summer 2021
The Oxford American’s Summer 2021 edition is dedicated to an exploration of Southern landscapes, waterways, borderlands, and disappearing coasts. In considering the perils and pleasure of Lake Lanier just outside Atlanta, a barrier chain of disappearing islands in the Gulf, and a series of unlikely World War II interactions in middle Tennessee, our writers ask: What is it about a space that creates feeling, memories, a history for those who occupy it?
Special thanks to the University of Arkansas Fay Jones School of Architecture and Design, the Presenting Sponsor of this issue.
Editor’s Letter: How Beautiful My Land Is, by Danielle A. Jackson
POINTS SOUTH
The Haunting of Lake Lanier, by Anjali Enjeti
The Pride of Nashville, by Mikeie Honda Reiland
The Chandeliers, by James Seay
The Cyclone of Rye Cove, by Amy D. Clark
Saturday on the Shrimp Lot, by Leslie Pariseau
A Pleasant Catastrophe, by Rachael Maddux
Five People Who Crave Sauce, a story by Ladee Hubbard
Oysters on the May, by Max Ufberg
Where I Was From, by Lauren Stroh
A Way to Become a Way to Be, a story by Carl Napolitano
FEATURES
Mirror House
Howard Finster, my father, and a path to beauty in our broken world
by Garrard Conley
La Cancion de la Nena
An undiscovered guitar prodigy in the borderlands
by Vanessa Angelica Villarreal
Water is Life
Black coastal Georgians remain resilient in the face of environmental peril
by Neesha Powell-Twagurumukiza
Cast in Concrete
A graphic essay by Martha Park
Walls
A story by Indya S. Finch
POEMS
Curve, by Bruce Bond
Blue-winged Warbler, by Carl Phillips
If Anyone Should Fight to Breathe, by Emily Skaja
This Life Not Yet Saved, by Geffrey Davis
Caulbearer, by Luisa A. Igloria
Art by: Dinorá Justice, Ross Mantle, Ryan Pierce, Chris Jackson, Melissa Brown, Wesley Allsbrook, Dylan Johnston, Emeline Mayo, Katlego Tlabela, Danny Leyland, Tjalf Sparnaay, Alex Ferrari, Nicholas Loffredo, Howard Finster, Jim Morgenthaler, Robert Poss, Keamber Pearson, Jeanne Moutoussamy-Ashe, Jon Henry, Martha Park, Sofia Hager