There are two important threads which run through the heart of Mark Kemp’s cultural memoir Dixie Lullaby:  A Story of Music, Race, and New Beginnings in a New South.  The first thread deals with the feelings and experiences from Kemp’s own coming-of-age at a time in the rural South that saw the desegregation of public life but no immediate end to the attitudes and feelings still held by many southern whites concerning race.

To this end, there are themes of self-discovery, self-destruction, and self-loathing as a whole generation of young people in the South began to reject the traditional segregated views of their parents.  Kemp, and others like him, would set off in search of a voice that could make sense of the contradictions around them while at the same time expressing a world view more in line with their own.

The second important thread in Kemp’s book deals with where that voice was found and how that voice would be begin to give rise to a healing process across the South.  For many young, white southerners who began to hit their teenage years in the early 70’s, that voice would be found in the transformative power of rock n roll.

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Popularity: 31% [?]

Up until a few weeks ago I had never heard of Hypocrite Press.  But as someone much wiser than I once said:  “It’s always better late, than never”.  As it turns out the small, independent press has been around in Charlottesville for well over fifteen years.  Founded in 1991, Hypocrite Press states as its mission statement:

…to promote awareness of, and a healthy critical stance toward, the underground subculture of downtown Charlottesville by printing and distributing the works of young local authors who choose to write about their lives in Charlottesville.

To date, Hypocrite Press lists eleven books currently available in print through Lulu, the online retailer and print on demand self-publishing website.  Many of Hypocrite’s early works including The Noble Salvage:  A Song of the South, Laughing Friends Deride, and Fandango depict the Boho-scene of Charlottesville’s Downtown Mall in the early to mid 1990’s and serve as important historical and cultural snapshots into the lives of Charlottesville’s twenty-somethings before the “boom” of the past decade. »Read More

Popularity: 42% [?]