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Magazine
Issue 117, Summer 2022
The Summer 2022 issue continues our year-long celebration of the Oxford American’s thirtieth anniversary, featuring a specially commissioned cover by Michael Berryhill. In this simmering edition, writers meditate on ancestry, identity, traditional songs, and textiles, as well as the journeys and migrations that led them from one home to another. A special section on masculinity features six writers on fatherhood, war, love, and barbershops. Jenn Shapland re-introduces a story from our archive on Carson McCullers alongside more than a dozen new essays, poems, and investigative pieces by your favorite Southern writers.
Editor’s Letter: Big Brother by Danielle A. Jackson
POINTS SOUTH
Snugfit Eye Patch, by James Seay
Even Jesus Left, by Tauheed Rahim II
Tell the Kids I Love Them, by Jeremy Redmon
The Tyrant, a story by Kaylie Saidin
Channel Orange Taught Me, by KB Brookins
Really Gone, a story by Michael A. Gonzales
FEATURES
A Long Georgia Night
The life and legacy of Mattie Green
by Stephen Kearse
Saeed, or The Other One
Excerpted from Alive at the End of the World © Saeed Jones
A story by Saeed Jones
Shaking the Tree
The gnarled history of Houston's live oaks
by Paula Mejía
From the archive
Hunting the Lonely Heart
What Made Carson McCullers so different?
by Elizabeth McCracken
With a new introduction
by Jenn Shapland
POEMS
El Hogar Que Compartimos/Homes We Share
Poems by Clara Muschietti, María Sánchez, and Fedosy Santaella
Translations by Curtis Bauer
OMNIVORE
The New Bend
Contemporary weaving artist Diedrick Brackens reinterprets a centuries-old quilting tradition
by Irene Vázquez
The Begging Song of Grand Mamou
How one of the oldest songs in America lives on
by Jordan LaHaye Fontenot
Cosmic Requilting
A new exhibition by Sanford Biggers deftly remixes the patchwork of history
Q&A by Jodie Bass
On Masculinity, The Power of the Word, And Finding Zion
From the web
by Carter Sickles, Nadirah Simmons, and Danté Stewart
Art by: Michael Berryhill, Marcus Jahmal, Anastasia Samoylova, Guglielmo Castelli, Farley Aguilar, Kerry James Marshall, Alexander Binder, Mark Milroy, Carter/Reddy, Tord Litleskane, Daniel Deslover, Michon Sanders, Cameron Kunzelman, Alysia Macaulay, Tania Franco Klein, Louise Dahl-Wolfe, Diedrick Brackens, Lance Rosenfield, Thomas Barratt, Gioncarlo Valentine, Sanford Biggers
Cover: Untitled, 2022. Gouache on paper, by Michael Berryhill for Oxford American. © The artist