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EVERYTHING ABOUT HIS MUSIC WAS INTERESTING

Black Keys frontman Dan Auerbach on Junior Kimbrough’s influence. “It’s proven most of the time to be true: some of the music that I love the most, that I want to live with forever, are records I...

By Benjamin Hedin

2016: THE YEAR IN STORIES

In February 2016, the Oxford American received a National Magazine Award for General Excellence. As we look ahead to 2017—and the OA’s twenty-fifth anniversary—we are revisiting just a few of many...

By Oxford American

A PHOTOGRAPHER’S DAYBOOK

5 A.M. I wake up at home in Hampshire County and start driving in the still, quiet morning. I’m heading toward Fayette County in my faded red pickup with a loud, broken exhaust pipe. To the Hawk’s...

By Lisa Elmaleh

COLOR IS EVERYWHERE

The exhibition is a sort of Faulknerian stream-of-consciousness narrative, moving seamlessly from subject to subject. Tattered orange and red dishtowels on a clothesline, each piece of cloth shot...

By W. Ralph Eubanks

SEEKING THE SOUTH IN CONTEMPORARY ART

On view right now at the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University is a crucial exhibition for these times.  Southern Accent: Seeking the American South in Contemporary Art is a necessarily...

By Alyssa Ortega Coppelman

SING FOR THEM

The story Bassekou Kouyaté wants to tell is simply this: it was cotton that brought the blues from Mali to America, and it was the  ngoni—the West African lute that is a predecessor to the...

By Alex Steyermark and Lavinia Jones Wright

OUR 18TH MUSIC ISSUE & CD

Highlights from the  Oxford American’s 18th Music Issue: “Visions of the Blues.” Across the 160-page magazine and 23-song CD compilation, we’re celebrating one of the South’s greatest...

By Oxford American

IF WE DO NOT DARE EVERYTHING

The police killed another black man today. I am furious with emotion; I am burning up inside as if with fever. The doctor tells me to try Prozak, Zoloft, Celexa or any number of other serotonin...

By Monica A. Hand

A VISIT WITH WHITE OAK PASTURES

A video supplement to “The Harris Hegemony” by John T. Edge, published in the Fall 2016 issue. “I wish I could tell you that I saw a burning bush or God spoke to me. But the truth is I became...

By Ethan Payne

Saving What Cannot Be Saved

By M.O. Walsh

THE UNTEXAN TEXAN

A conversation with Ben Stroud. “Lots of people don’t like the idea of white guilt, for a whole variety of reasons. But I think it’s useful, and important. The simple answer is that if you’re white...

By Elaine Ruth Boe

It Was What It Was

Guy was telling me for at least a year and a half before he died that he would not be here when the book came out.

By Jonathan Bernstein