SOUTH OF HAUNTED DREAMS: A RIDE THROUGH SLAVERY'S OLD BACK YARD

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Summary: A black writer confronts the South and his demons
Review: Eddy L. Harris is the best modern-day "travel" writer there is, bar none. He has gone down the Mississippi in a canoe, trekked across Africa and even written a book about his explorations, both internal and external, of today's Harlem. Harris is a writer who happens to be black. He doesn't want people to judge him because he's black any more than because he has a beard or is tall, but blackness is part of him, and as a writer he seems to feel an urge to connect with what it means to be black in America. In this poetic, fascinating account, Harris tours the Southern states of the U.S. with his own peronal twist - he rides a motorcycle. This way, as is not the case with a car trip, he can connect with the land and the people as he travels; he is closer to them. Of course, this means they have no choice but to see him, too. What Harris encounters and comes to find out on his trip is surprising, at times sad and at times wonderful. The writing is skillful in the extreme: although non-fiction, Harris manages to arrange his experiences and his ruminations about them in such a way as to form a novel-like construction, with buildup, climax and denouement. This memoir is emminently readable and ultimately revealing about race, the South and America. For anyone even remotely interested in those topics, this is without doubt a must read