Re-envisioning “The South”: Immigration and Post-southern Place in Cynthia Shearer’s The Celestial Jukebox

Abstract

The US South has been defined as a backward and agrarian space with its monolithic structure that maintained the plantation nostalgia. Due to its plantation history, the Lost Cause, and being a part of Bible belt, the US South and specifically Mississippi was not open to transformation. However, the impact of globalization and emerging international corporations created a paradigm shift. Historian James L. Peacock suggests that “globalization has the capacity to fundamentally transform the South” as southerners tend to define themselves in a global context rather than a regional one (17). The arrival of immigrant workers not only changed the region demographically but also culturally. This inspired the depiction of the impacts of new cultural and demographic change on conventional notions of region and space. Within this scope, this paper seeks to analyze Cynthia Shearer’s novel The Celestial Jukebox (2005) to discuss the paradigm shift in defining the South. The paper first presents historical ideas of the South, explains what the South and multiple Souths mean, introduces postmodern spatial theory and then utilizing postmodern spatial theory, the article attempts to discuss how immigration and globalization changed the culture, recognition, and perception of the region using two public spaces in The Celestial Jukebox.

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