Reading To Kill a Mockingbird from a Southern guy's view

Just wanted to share that my essay, "Alabama Bound: Reading Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird While Southern" has recently been published in The Southern Quarterly. Here is a link to a .pdf reprint.

I have taught To Kill a Mockingbird for years so I was pleased to be asked to write about the book and growing up in Birmingham, Alabama. My family moved there from the Chicago suburbs when I was nine. In the essay, I write about my experience as a Northern boy learning how to live in the South and how To Kill a Mockingbird informed my understanding of Alabama. I weave in references to President Obama, Drive-by Truckers, George Wallace, the Birmingham Library, the WPA's Alabama: A Guide to the Deep South (1941), my childhood confusion on segregated water fountains at the Birmingham Zoo, and one of my favorite professors when I was a student at Samford University, Wayne Flynt.  I'm glad Mark West asked me to write this essay.

Thanks for checking out the essay.