Edited by southern historians Orville Vernon Burton and Eldred E. Prince, Jr., Becoming Southern Writers pays tribute to South Carolinian Charles Joyner’s fifty year career as a southern
historian, folklorist, and social activist. Exceptional writers of fact, fiction, and poetry, the contributors to the volume are among Joyner’s many friends, admirers, and colleagues as well as
those to whom Joyner has served as a mentor. The contributors describe how they came to write about the South and how they came to write about it in the way they do while reflecting on the
humanistic tradition of scholarship as lived experience.
The contributors constitute a Who’s Who of southern writers--from award-winning literary artists to historians. Freed from constraints of their disciplines by Joyner’s example, they
enthusiastically describe family reunions, involvement in the civil rights movement, research projects, and mentors. While not all contributors are native to the South or the United States and
a few write about the South only occasionally, all the essayists root their work in southern history, and all have made distinguished contributions to southern writing. Diverse in theme and
style, these writings represent each author’s personal reflections on experiences living in and writing about the South while touching on topics that surfaced in Joyner’s own works, such as
race, family, culture, and place. Whether based on personal or historical events, each one speaks to Joyner’s theme that "all history is local history, somewhere."
