Toward Love

An early autumn assessment of what we hope y’all get when you open Salvation South.

By Chuck Reece

Oct 7, 2023

Two times in my life, I have dreamed up publications. There’s that first one, where many of y’all came to know me and my work, and then this one, Salvation South. The first one had a highly specific intention that grew out of my anger at how Southerners were stereotyped. The intention behind this one was fuzzier, and it grew out of a conscious decision to turn away from anger.

Honestly, I did not know if that decision would (or even could) take any particular form as Salvation South grew. All sorts of publications grow out of their founders’ intentions to turn toward a particular objective. We are going to tell stories about X. Just like that first publication I launched could say, We are going to tell stories that debunk stereotypes about the South and Southerners.

But what kind of publication might come from a decision to turn away from…not an objective, but an emotion?

That’s definitely some fuzziness right there.

But soon, Salvation South will hit its second anniversary, and lo and behold, the decision to turn away from anger and toward love has taken shape. This publication has become a destination for people who want to tell stories about the South as they see it. Not stories meant to be antidotes to what other people think about this region, but stories that express what the people who write them think, feel, and ponder about the South.

That evolution has had two outcomes, in my view. First, it has attracted important writers from all over the South, because they have come to believe Salvation South offers a home for them to express themselves without the constraints of conventional publications. Second, it has brought great writing from the hearts of lesser known Southerners to our weekly packages of Sunday reading.

—An excerpt from Ron Rash's eighth novel, The Caretaker
—“Cornbread Is Personal,” by Justin Cox
—“Where We Go From Here”: Poems by Mary Dean Lee

We have exceptional examples of each this week. Ron Rash is one of Southern literatures most widely lauded figures, whose fiction and poetry have kept us spellbound for three decades. We are honored indeed to publish an excerpt from The Caretaker, his eighth and latest novel, this week. And we welcome two Southerners who have gone off up North to tell stories straight from their Southern hearts. The first is Justin Cox, a North Carolina native Baptist preacher who now lives in Connecticut. He writes a brilliant blog called Black Sheep Baptist (a title that many of us, self included, can definitely relate to). As we heard Justin say in a sermon you can watch on YouTube, “I am a Southerner, and I am a Baptist. But I am not a Southern Baptist.”

In his essay for us, “Cornbread Is Personal,” Justin tells the story of how he went looking for the spirit of his late grandmother through food—which was a difficult task, given that she had left not a single index card with a recipe on it when she departed this mortal coil. His tale of how he ultimately “tasted memory” is beautiful, and just chock full of love. We’re pleased to welcome Justin to our family of contributors, just as we are poet Mary Dean Lee. Georgia-born but now living in Montreal, Mary Dean’s two verses for us this week balance the struggles and hopes that are part and parcel of any Southern life beautifully.

Happy fall, y’all!

Chuck Reece

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Chuck Reece is the co-founder and editor-in-chief of Salvation South, the weekly web magazine you're reading right now. He was the founding editor of The Bitter Southerner. He grew up in the north Georgia mountains in a little town called Ellijay.