Anjali Enjeti
Reviewed by Dawn Major
Early into Southbound Enjeti says, “The problem with masks is that it’s very hard to see out of them.” The human mind attempts to find connections and these particular words connected the entire collection thematically. Enjeti was referring to the mask of silence here, specifically hiding behind a mask as a child who laughed off racist comments directed at her—a defense mechanism. Yet, masks appear over and over in Southbound. What Enjeti is saying is that there are all types of masks. You don’t have to put on a literal mask like the white hoods of the Ku Klux Klan members who shot five Black women in Chattanooga in 1980, an incident she describes in her essay, “Treatment.” In that same essay, the mask assumes Southern Christian morality and righteousness hiding behind religion, preaching against homosexuality, and calling AIDS a plague on gays. But the mask probably most familiar to us is the mask of silence. Simply ignoring injustice or staying silent because “I didn’t do it,” or “It doesn’t affect me personally” is a single silence that multiplies into another silence until there are thousands of little silences. That’s what resonated with me personally with Southbound because that’s the mask I have worn myself.
Some of Enjeti’s individual experiences really hit home for me. Enjeti moved from the Midwest to Chattanooga, TN, a few years before I moved from Missouri to Georgia. In her essay “Southbound,” she relates her experience of visiting Confederama, a tourist trap that featured dioramas of miniature Union and Confederate soldiers fighting at key battle sites for the Battle of Chattanooga. A young Enjeti commented on the weirdness of this place to her parents. I was instantly transported to my first experience of Southern weirdness the summer my family moved to Georgia and we visited Stone Mountain. This was the late 1980s. That night my family and I watched a laser show celebrating the big dogs of the Confederacy—Stonewall Jackson, Robert E. Lee, and Jefferson Davis—chiseled into the mountain and coming to life. Amongst fireworks, rebel yells, and adults waving Confederate flags screaming, “The South will rise again!” I had a similar experience to what Enjeti wrote about in her essay. I wondered if the laws were different here than the rest of the country. Was there a different government? And if they were rising again and now that I lived here, would I have to be part of it? Enjeti states Confederama was “jarring for me as a young child” because of how “unapologetic, misinformed, and prevalent this celebration felt. It was if the South had won the Civil War, and the War had ended only yesterday.”
This is a book for everyone. In response to the protests of 2020, daily tragedies of Black Americans being killed by law enforcement, and the Black Lives Matter movement, many corporations and businesses saw the need for dialogue and have created diversity groups who engage employees of different ethnicities to discuss their experiences. They also have readings and book discussions. Enjeti’s essays would be an excellent way for companies to launch conversations between these groups. For future and current activists wishing someone would impart wisdom or give voice to the experience of volunteering, protesting, and campaigning for equality and social change, Southbound is waiting for you. There’s a great essay called “Armchair Activism in the Real World” that addresses activism in the time of a pandemic for those saying I can’t. These essays are for teachers seeking diverse voices to educate and engage their students. For non-fiction writers, essayists, and memoirists contemplating structure and voice, Southbound acts as pseudo-guidebook in writing; it’s certainly a memoir on how Enjeti found her voice. For white readers wanting to understand otherness, racism, and perspectives from people of color, these essays are a wonderful starting point. For white people, you may find the essays to be an uncomfortable read. That’s okay. If you do feel discomfort, ask yourself why. It’s not a bad thing. You can still respect, value, and learn from Enjeti’s experiences.
“Anger Like Fire” is probably one of my favorite essays because no one has ever said it’s okay to have rage until now. Southbound will upset you. It’ll enrage you. It’ll hurt. It also educates. It also speaks. If it doesn’t, please check for a pulse. It’s not necessary to read the essays in order, but it does make clear how Enjeti’s early beginnings led to where she is now. Enjeti compellingly weaves personal accounts in with current events, statistics, research, and history. It isn’t the type of book to read in one setting, or even two, three, or four settings to avoid imploding. That’s not to say I couldn’t stomach what Enjeti was telling me, but I could only process the emotional rollercoaster Enjeti took me on in spells. With Southbound, no topic is off the table; these personal essays are powerhouses with a purpose.
Anjali Enjeti is a former attorney, organizer, and award-winning journalist based near Atlanta. She is the author of the essay collection Southbound: Essays on Identity, Inheritance, and Social Change, and the novel, The Parted Earth. Her writing about politics, social justice, and books has appeared in Harper’s BAZAAR, ZORA, Courier Newsroom, Mic, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Washington Post, Al Jazeera, The Nation, and elsewhere. She teaches in the MFA program at Reinhardt University and is the co-founder of They See Blue Georgia, an organization for South Asian Democrats.
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