Renkl's sense of joyful belonging to the South, a region too often dismissed on both coasts in crude stereotypes and bad jokes, co-exists with her intense desire for Southerners who face prejudice or poverty finally to be embraced and supported ... Renkl at her most tender and most fierce ... Renkl's gift, just as it was in her first book Late Migrations, is to make fascinating for others what is closest to her heart ... Any initial sense of emotional whiplash faded as as I proceeded across the six sections and realized that the book is largely organized around one concept, that of fair and loving treatment for all — regardless of race, class, sex, gender or species ... What rises in me after reading her essays is Lewis' famous urging to get in good trouble to make the world fairer and better. Many people in the South are doing just that — and through her beautiful writing, Renkl is among them.
...luminous ... In an effort to expand our view of the South beyond stereotypes, she explores the many aspects of her beloved homeland: lush landscapes, family traditions and histories, and political and religious complexities ... Renkl's lyrical prose soars ... I keep this book nearby to revisit the humanity and hope in its pages.
Everyone should have a friend like Margaret Renkl: thoughtful, engaged, compassionate and, above all, acutely observant ... Arranged by themes that include the natural world, politics and social justice, family and community and arts and culture, Renkl's 59 concise essays demonstrate impressive erudition ... Margaret Renkl is both unfailingly honest and deeply empathetic in creating the vivid portrait of her home region that emerges organically from these intensely personal and well-informed essays.
Renkl’s essays confront the tired, flat stereotypes of a homogenous, conservative, redneck South, while acknowledging the kernels of truth from which they arise ... She rankles at being dubbed the 'voice of the South' because, she says, there is no one South. But that doesn’t keep her from honing a voice of writerly eloquence and muscle, one that is deeply personal yet also universal, which is the magic of a masterful essay. Not all readers will agree with Renkl’s progressive politics, but the collection is much more than that Her prose is reminiscent of Verlyn Klinkenborg’s meditations on rural life, also published in The Times. Both are like stumbling upon an exquisite, rare blossom in an unexpected place—inviting you to pause and ponder, and offer silent thanks in praise ... As a curated collection of newspaper columns, Graceland, At Last lacks some of the poetry and elegiac beauty of her genre-busting debut work of interwoven reflections about family, grief and backyard epiphanies, but Renkl’s singular voice is clear.
Graceland, At Last gathers a selection of Renkl’s columns from the past four years, inviting loyal readers and newcomers alike to take in Renkl’s perspective on the world ... Renkl often finds gifts in the mundane ... Whether extolling the wonders of a rattlesnake or lamenting Southern Christians’ support of oppressive policies, Renkl engages with her home region’s beauty and complexity.
Throughout the book, these fascinating columns both entertain and serve as reminders of big news events from the past four years ... It’s bittersweet to look back on the recent past via its newsworthy hardships, but Margaret Renkl’s perspective feels like a guiding light. Even when she takes on tough, sometimes uncomfortable topics, she has a way of dissolving tension with her graceful and grateful approach, but her tone never turns preachy. She speaks to us as readers in a way that makes us all feel like family and with a gentle wisdom that will make you want to spend hours in her company. No matter where you’re from, column after column, Margaret Renkl will make you feel right at home.
Margaret Renkl’s collection of essays from The New York Times, unfolds like a 'patchwork quilt' of voices, stories, and perspectives from the American South, underscoring how the South is neither one entity nor one voice ... While these essays were written during the Trump presidency, and some during the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, Renkl illustrates more what has been gained rather than lost in our communities ... Her essays on family and growing up in Alabama bring us back to our own heirloom stories, recipes, and holiday traditions, and what it means to feel the guiding hand of previous generations. The real treats of this collection are her essays celebrating the legacies of two influential Johns in American history: the late John Lewis and John Prine.
Through these warm and heartfelt essays, Renkl shows us how to keep on loving this complicated place, how to look right at its 'appalling truths' and gesture, still, toward hope ... The resulting collection of essays is stitched together like a patchwork quilt—an art form close to Renkl and passed down from her maternal ancestors ... In her effort to uncover those intricacies, a through-line emerges across the book’s six sections: Renkl’s commitment to bearing witness—to the landscape, the people, the struggle around her. She calls her readers into this role, too ... Renkl understands the important role that looking plays as a potential first step toward change, the need to allow as many people as possible to see. Here’s hoping we continue to look with her ... Renkl maintains a posture of hope and a belief in people such as those in that Hermitage neighborhood. It’s a hope that’s contagious ... There, especially, is how this collection shines—in Renkl’s ability to write with warm affection for the people and landscapes of her homeland and also look behind the curtain at the darker truths.
Renkl honors the natural beauty of her lush roots while acknowledging the ravages of slavery still embedded in the terrain .. this lovely little book is bright, courteous, and informative, even lady-like, but then Renkl ventures into territory that more timid Southerners would avoid: sex, religion, and politics ... In sharply crafted essays, she also upbraids the state she loves for its immoral array of tactics to undermine voting rights.
Renkl is a lovely writer, and to read her work is to be reminded that as a younger woman, she once aspired to be a poet. In one sense, she’s realized that dream; her lyrical sentences sing from the page ... Passages like that one underscore Renkl’s sublime style. But it’s no discredit to her to consider the fact that without her regional roots, Renkl might not have been chosen to write a regular column for the Times. Her role, both a privilege and an abiding complication, is apparently to be a Great Explainer of All Things Southern to the rest of the country ... This wounded condition, a legacy of the South’s fraught history, seems an analog of sorts for America’s current national mood. In the wake of a pandemic and racial and political strife, the broader culture also seems ill at ease. It’s why Renkl’s essays, though written by a child of the South, resonate with particular urgency ... Renkl’s columns deserve to be read again, and for years to come.
Readers can easily home in on one of the book’s wide-ranging six sections, sample an essay or two from each, or barrel through from start to finish, as whim dictates. Renkl’s voice is calm, steady, and sometimes surprising.
These collected columns are not just a celebration of Nashville’s green spaces ... Among them are fierce indictments of political malfeasance ... Come for the righteousness, stay for the linguistic sorcery ... Charming accounts of vengeful mall Santas, roadside attractions as proof of humanity’s wit and wile, and drawing peace from family heirlooms round the irresistible collection out. Renkl observes that great writers 'know their communities from the inside out'; Graceland, At Last proves the maxim with its generous helpings of Southern hospitality.
Originally written for The Times during an era of across-the-aisle appeals between friends and family, many of the essays are so brief they could fit in a well-articulated longform social media post. This brevity makes them especially shareable among loved ones and serves to combat the information fatigue so many readers experience when keeping up with the news ... These distinct topics cross-pollinate wonderfully, setting the reader up to witness the connections between each subject ... In a time when objective truths are questioned and even talking about the weather can become politicized, Renkl’s writing works to defy polarity. Love, grief, curiosity and other universal emotions ground the lofty topics of these essays ... From a craft perspective, her choice to write to the emotional heart of these stories is transformative. By choosing a first-person narrative over an unbiased journalistic tone, she removes the scaffolding of political rhetoric to reveal the relatable. It’s pure alchemy.
Renkl vividly evokes the lush natural beauty of the rivers, old-growth forests ... As she shows, that land is in peril ... Nevertheless, Renkl finds hope for change ... A wide-ranging look at the realities of the South.
