Blessings and Disasters: A story of Alabama
By Alexis Okeowo
MacMillan
In the U.S., moving from the South to the North is like moving to a different country, and it’s not even that the North is that different from home. It’s the perception of the South that makes you constantly aware that you’re not there anymore. It’s easy for those who have never been to the South to read headlines, consume popular media and criticize what’s going on down here.
As Alexis Okeowo writes into that middle in her new hybrid collection of essays/memoir, Blessings and Disasters: A story of Alabama, the reality of course is complicated, if people are willing to see it. In a deeply reported book, she sets to tell the story of her home state. Drawing on her work as a foreign correspondent, she finds similarities between the way Americans saw Africa and the Deep South.
“I realized that the assumptions held about the region can be so unconsciously, and yet firmly, narrow that they limit our conversation about how many Americas there are, if there are indeed different Americas’ what those places look like; and what their residents believe,” Okeowo writes in the book’s introduction.
Okeowo is a writer for the New Yorker. At the time of the writing and reporting of the book, she hadn’t lived in Alabama for a while, and she’s transparent about that. The distance she has from her subject, while important to acknowledge, is part of the magic of this book. Okeowo has a deep knowledge and affection for her home state and a great care for the people who live there. She also has an outside perspective, which helps her bridge the gap between readers and the subjects of her writing.
She’s not just a reporter who decided to visit Black churches in Alabama. The church was “the center” of her existence as a pre-teen, so she writes with authority about its role in the state and in different communities within it.
“In Alabama, we exist at the border of blessing and disaster, and it is still easier to believe in divine protection than to worry about things we can’t control,” she writes.
The book shines in its ability to hold the blessings and disasters in tension, painting a stereotype-defying portrait of the state and how it came to be.
Okeowo chooses to start her story with the Muscogee, the tribe that is believed to have settled what is now Alabama in the mid-16th century. It’s not a cursory mention, Okeowo includes their stories in different essays throughout the book.
Sometimes books about the Deep South generalize about the region. Indeed, there are similarities among states, but these attempts often paint over history with broad strokes: We get the gist of what happened without realizing whose perspectives have been left out of the account. Okeowo paints the story of Alabama in its specificity and complexity.
Okeowo writes not just about white people or just about Nation people or just about Black people. She weaves the stories of different groups together, complicating what it means to be Alabamian — and not just in the ways she believes in.
She writes in the first chapter about the Native peoples’ struggle for sovereignty in the state. In the second chapter, titled “Indecent Pride,” she writes at length about an interview she conducted with a man who is passionate about the Confederate legacy of the state and had a personal connection to it. Later on, she shares some of her family’s story of immigration.
“My people are Africans who came to Alabama, but they are also people who became Alabamians,” Okeowo wrote.
In including all these different voices, Okeowo doesn’t fall into the pitfalls of both-sides journalism. Whether she’s writing about the legacy of the Civil War, taxes, prisons, or her experiences in speech and debate, she carefully traces the steps of those who came before her and illuminates the past with clarity.
The subtitle, “A story of Alabama,” implies the existence of many other stories perhaps yet untold. This kind of work is deeply necessary given the current political climate. To truly love a place, you must deeply know it, and Okeowo has charted a path to more understanding.
