{"title":"Brooks Blevins","description":"Brooks Blevins is the Endowed Associate Professor of Ozark Studies at Missouri State University. He is the author of Cattle in the Cotton Fields, Hill Folks, and Lyon College, 1872-2002 and editor of Life in the Leatherwoods, the last two published by the University of Arkansas Press.","products":[{"product_id":"arkansas-arkansaw-how-bear-hunters-hillbillies-and-good-ol-boys-defined-a-state-paperback","title":"Arkansas\/Arkansaw: How Bear Hunters, Hillbillies, and Good Ol' Boys Defined a State - Paperback","description":"\u003cp\u003eWhat do Scott Joplin, John Grisham, Gen. Douglas MacArthur, Maya Angelou, Brooks Robinson, Helen Gurley Brown, Johnny Cash, Alan Ladd, and Sonny Boy Williamson have in common? They're all Arkansans. What do hillbillies, rednecks, slow trains, bare feet, moonshine, and double-wides have in common? For many in America these represent Arkansas more than any Arkansas success stories do. In 1931 H. L. Mencken described AR (not AK, folks) as the \"apex of moronia.\" While, in 1942 a Time magazine article said Arkansas had \"developed a mass inferiority complex unique in American history.\" Arkansas\/Arkansaw is the first book to explain how Arkansas's image began and how the popular culture stereotypes have been perpetuated and altered through succeeding generations. Brooks Blevins argues that the image has not always been a bad one. He discusses travel accounts, literature, radio programs, movies, and television shows that give a very positive image of the Natural State. From territorial accounts of the Creole inhabitants of the Mississippi River Valley to national derision of the state's triple-wide governor's mansion to Li'l Abner, the Beverly Hillbillies, and Slingblade, Blevins leads readers on an entertaining and insightful tour through more than two centuries of the idea of Arkansas. One discovers along the way how one state becomes simultaneously a punch line and a source of admiration for progressives and social critics alike. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eWinner, 2011 Ragsdale Award\u003c\/p\u003e\u003ch3\u003eFront Jacket\u003c\/h3\u003e\u003cp\u003eWhat do Scott Joplin, John Grisham, Gen. Douglas MacArthur, Maya Angelou, Brooks Robinson, Helen Gurley Brown, Johnny Cash, Alan Ladd, and Sonny Boy Williamson have in common? They're all Arkansans. What do hillbillies, rednecks, slow trains, bare feet, moonshine, and double-wides have in common? For many in America these represent Arkansas more than any Arkansas success stories do. In 1931 H. L. Mencken described AR (not AK, folks) as the \"apex of moronia.\" While, in 1942 a Time magazine article said Arkansas had \"developed a mass inferiority complex unique in American history.\" \u2028Arkansas\/Arkansaw is the first book to explain how Arkansas's image began and how the popular culture stereotypes have been perpetuated and altered through succeeding generations. Brooks Blevins argues that the image has not always been a bad one. He discusses travel accounts, literature, radio programs, movies, and television shows that give a very positive image of the Natural State. From territorial accounts of the Creole inhabitants of the Mississippi River Valley to national derision of the state's triple-wide governor's mansion to Li'l Abner, the Beverly Hillbillies, and Slingblade, Blevins leads readers on an entertaining and insightful tour through more than two centuries of the idea of Arkansas. One discovers along the way how one state becomes simultaneously a punch line and a source of admiration for progressives and social critics alike.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"BooksCloud","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":51367388872927,"sku":"9781557289520","price":26.44,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0813\/8958\/4607\/files\/cFg8izQAsL9781557289520.webp?v=1789106181"},{"product_id":"up-south-in-the-ozarks-dispatches-from-the-margins-paperback","title":"Up South in the Ozarks: Dispatches from the Margins - Paperback","description":"\u003cp\u003eThe Ozarks is a place that defies easy categorization. Sprawling across much of Missouri and Arkansas and smaller parts of Oklahoma and Kansas, it is caught on the margins of America's larger cultural regions: part southern, part midwestern, and maybe even a little bit western. For generations Ozarkers have been more likely than most other Americans to live near or below the poverty line-a situation that has often subjected them to unflattering stereotypes. In short, the Ozarks has been a marginal place populated by marginalized people. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e Historian Brooks Blevins has spent his life studying and writing about the people of his native regions-the South and the Ozarks. He has been in the vanguard of a new and vibrant Ozarks Studies movement that has worked to refract the stories of Ozarkers through a more realistic and less exotic lens. In \u003ci\u003eUp South in the Ozarks: Dispatches from the Margins\u003c\/i\u003e, Blevins introduces us with humor and fairness to mostly unseen lives of the past and present: southern gospel singing schools and ballad collectors, migratory cotton pickers and backroad country storekeepers, fireworks peddlers and impoverished diarists. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e Part historical and part journalistic, Blevins's essays combine the scholarly sensibilities of a respected historian with the insights of someone raised in rural hill country. His stories of marginalized characters often defy stereotype. They entertain as much as they educate. And most of them originate in the same place Blevins does: up south in the Ozarks.","brand":"BooksCloud","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":51376725590239,"sku":"9781682262924","price":28.75,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0813\/8958\/4607\/files\/fvuZq-4C5O9781682262924.webp?v=1789221795"}],"url":"https:\/\/blackandbarhe.com\/collections\/brooks-blevins.oembed","provider":"Black \u0026 Barhe Bookstore","version":"1.0","type":"link"}