The South as Homeplace: Identity and Resistance in Memphis

Defining the Thematic Claim: The South as a Contested Homeplace

In Memphis, Tara M. Stringfellow presents the South not as a passive backdrop but as an active, contradictory force that shapes identity and resistance. The novel’s epigraphs—Toni Morrison’s observation that Black women “invented herself” out of profound desolation, and André 3000’s declaration that “The South got something to say”—frame the central claim: the South can become a homeplace, a site of belonging and creative power, only when its inhabitants confront its history of racial terror and reclaim it through memory, art, and communal bonds. This is not a nostalgic vision. The novel insists that homeplace is earned through struggle, and that the same ground that holds violence also holds the seeds of liberation.

Arrival and the Yellow Door: The South as Refuge and Threat

The novel opens with Joan arriving in Memphis in 1995, exhausted from a journey that marks the end of her parents’ marriage. The house on Locust Street—with its vine-covered porch, cats, and hummingbirds—initially appears as a sanctuary. The yellow door, with its lion’s-head knocker, suggests both welcome and vigilance. Yet the door also conceals a threat: Joan’s cousin Derek, who raped her seven years earlier, stands inside. This duality—home as haven and home as site of trauma—is central to the theme.

Joan’s paralysis upon seeing Derek, her involuntary urination, and her mother’s dismissal of it as exhaustion reveal how the South’s promise of safety is undermined by the very people who should protect. But the house also offers a counterweight: Auntie August’s embrace, the smell of lamb chops, and the presence of Mya, who bravely steps inside. The yellow door thus becomes a threshold between past and present, between the North Carolina home that failed and the Memphis home that must be rebuilt.

Miriam’s journey in the same year reinforces this tension. Driving through the Smoky Mountains in a broken-down van, she stops at an Exxon station where a white attendant repairs the air conditioning with duct tape. The encounter is marked by both kindness and underlying unease—the dog growls, the girls are wary. Miriam’s memory of the yard sale, where she sold her belongings and placed a “free” sign on the family’s 1969 Shelby Mustang, signals her rejection of a marriage that had become a prison. The Mustang, once a symbol of Jax’s pride, is now discarded. Miriam’s decision to fix the van herself when it breaks again outside Sugar Tree underscores her self-reliance—a trait she inherits from her mother, Hazel. The South, for Miriam, is not a return to innocence but a deliberate choice to reclaim agency.

The Legacy of Resistance: Hazel and the Community

The theme of the South as homeplace is rooted in the legacy of Hazel, whose activism in 1968 prefigures the novel’s central concerns. In the aftermath of the sanitation workers’ deaths, Hazel and her daughter Miriam paint a placard reading “i am a man.” This act of protest, born from witnessing the crushed bodies of Black workers, transforms the domestic space into a site of political resistance. Hazel’s home becomes a gathering place for revolutionaries—women in leather jackets, men leaving coolers of crawfish—where leaflets and books by Frederick Douglass and Nella Larsen line the shelves. The South, for Hazel, is not merely a geography but a battleground for dignity.

Hazel’s death in 1985, collapsing in her garden while planting seeds, is both a loss and a passing of the torch. The garden itself—a place of growth and nurture—becomes a symbol of the homeplace she cultivated. Her daughter August carries forward this legacy. In the beauty shop scene from 1995, August leads the women in a spontaneous chorus of “Amazing Grace,” a moment of collective joy that is “Black female joy in a language private to them.” The laughter that “could break glass” and “uplift a family” is a form of resistance against the daily indignities of racism. The shop, like Hazel’s parlor, is a homeplace where Black women sustain one another through humor, song, and shared experience.

The quilts that appear throughout the novel are tangible expressions of this communal homeplace. They are made from scraps of fabric, each piece carrying memory—a dress, a curtain, a shirt. When Miriam and August decide to make Joan a quilt before she leaves for London, they are not simply sewing a blanket; they are stitching together the stories of their family and their South. The quilt becomes a portable homeplace, a way for Joan to carry the love and resilience of her community across the ocean.

Art as Reclamation: Joan’s Portraits and the Quilt

Joan’s artistic development is the novel’s most explicit articulation of the South as homeplace. From her first encounter with Miss Dawn, whose hands she longs to sketch, Joan sees the Black women of Memphis as subjects worthy of art. Her portfolio for the Royal College of Art consists of ten large portraits of the women of Douglass, North Memphis—Miss Dawn’s hands, Miss Jade’s updos, Mika’s red nails. These are not abstract figures but specific, embodied women whose beauty and labor have been historically overlooked. By painting them, Joan reclaims the South’s visual narrative, insisting that Black Southern women are not merely victims but creators.

The act of hiding her drawings in Derek’s room—the very site of her trauma—is a powerful reclamation. August’s instruction to “go over there and show them all” transforms the space of violation into a space of artistic triumph. Joan’s acceptance to the London art school, delivered in an envelope with British stamps, is not an escape from the South but a validation of it. As she realizes, “This was always in us: this gift.” The quilt that her mother and aunt insist on making before she leaves is the final symbol: it wraps her in the warmth of home even as she departs.

The buried comb adds another layer. Joan buries the comb—an object associated with Derek—as a form of magical resistance, and later credits it with his imprisonment. Whether or not the comb has literal power, it represents Joan’s agency in confronting evil. The South, for Joan, is not a place to flee but a place to transform through art and ritual.

Complexity and Contradiction: Violence and Belonging

The novel refuses to romanticize the South. The same streets that hold Miss Dawn’s porch and the beauty shop’s laughter are also patrolled by gangs. In 1997, Joan describes how the Douglass Park Bishops control the neighborhood, and how a drive-by shooting kills Slim, his mother, grandmother, and dog. The violence is not external to the homeplace; it is woven into its fabric. August’s comment that a Black woman would never know freedom reflects a deep pessimism, yet the novel counters this with moments of grace.

The character of Derek embodies the contradiction. He is both family and predator, a product of the same South that nurtures Joan’s art. His rape of Joan is an act of terror within the home, and his later imprisonment and murder of other women complicate any simple narrative of redemption. The novel does not excuse him; instead, it shows how the South’s legacy of violence—racial, sexual, and economic—can corrupt even those who are loved. Joan’s visit to the prison in 2003, where she feels shame for having sought revenge, reveals the moral complexity of resistance.

Yet the novel insists that the South can be reclaimed. Miriam’s declaration that “it’s our city now” in response to her mother’s warning not to burn it down is a defiant claim of ownership. The women of the novel—Hazel, August, Miriam, Joan, Mya—are not passive inheritors of a painful history; they are active agents who remake the South in their own image. The homeplace is not a fixed location but a process of becoming, a continuous act of invention.

Study Questions and Answers

1. How do the epigraphs from Toni Morrison and André 3000 frame the novel’s treatment of the South as homeplace?

Morrison’s quote about Black women inventing themselves out of desolation establishes the theme of self-creation in the face of systemic oppression. André 3000’s declaration that “The South got something to say” asserts that the region is not a silent backdrop but a voice that demands to be heard. Together, they suggest that the South is both a site of struggle and a source of cultural power, and that Black women are central to its reclamation.

2. What role does the yellow door play in the novel’s exploration of home and danger?

The yellow door is a threshold that simultaneously welcomes and threatens. It is the entrance to the family home, a place of refuge, but it also leads to Derek’s room, the site of Joan’s rape. The door’s lion’s-head knocker suggests vigilance and protection, yet it cannot prevent the violence within. The door thus symbolizes the dual nature of the South: a place of belonging that is also a place of peril.

3. How does Hazel’s activism in 1968 influence later generations?

Hazel’s painting of the “i am a man” sign and her hosting of revolutionaries in her home establish a tradition of political resistance that August and Miriam continue. Her death in the garden passes this legacy to her daughters, who carry it forward through their own acts of defiance—August’s leadership in the beauty shop, Miriam’s decision to leave an abusive marriage, and Joan’s artistic reclamation of Black womanhood.

4. In what ways does Joan’s art serve as a form of resistance and reclamation?

Joan’s portraits of the women of Douglass transform subjects who are often marginalized into central figures of beauty and dignity. By painting Miss Dawn’s hands and Miss Jade’s updos, she asserts that Black Southern women are worthy of artistic attention. Hiding her work in Derek’s room reclaims a space of trauma, and her acceptance to art school validates her vision. The quilt made for her departure symbolizes that she carries this reclaimed homeplace with her.

5. What does the quilt represent in the context of the South as homeplace?

The quilt is a tangible embodiment of communal memory and love. Made from scraps of fabric, it stitches together the stories of the family and the South. When Miriam and August insist on making Joan a quilt before she leaves for London, they are giving her a portable homeplace—a reminder that her identity and resistance are rooted in the women who came before her. The quilt is both a farewell and a promise of return.