The Last Resort

Taking the Mississippi Cure

Biography & Memoir
Cover of the book The Last Resort by Norma Watkins, University Press of Mississippi
View on Amazon View on AbeBooks View on Kobo View on B.Depository View on eBay View on Walmart
Author: Norma Watkins ISBN: 9781604739787
Publisher: University Press of Mississippi Publication: May 9, 2011
Imprint: University Press of Mississippi Language: English
Author: Norma Watkins
ISBN: 9781604739787
Publisher: University Press of Mississippi
Publication: May 9, 2011
Imprint: University Press of Mississippi
Language: English

Raised under the racial segregation that kept her family's southern country hotel afloat, Norma Watkins grows up listening at doors, trying to penetrate the secrets and silences of the black help and of her parents' marriage. Groomed to be an ornament to white patriarchy, she sees herself failing at the ideal of becoming a southern lady.

The Last Resort, her compelling memoir, begins in childhood at Allison's Wells, a popular Mississippi spa for proper white people, run by her aunt. Life at the rambling hotel seems like paradise. Yet young Norma wonders at a caste system that has colored people cooking every meal while forbidding their sitting with whites to eat.

Once integration is court-mandated, her beloved father becomes a stalwart captain in defense of Jim Crow as a counselor to fiery, segregationist Governor Ross Barnett. His daughter flounders, looking for escape. A fine house, wonderful children, and a successful husband do not compensate for the shock of Mississippi's brutal response to change, daily made manifest by the men in her home. A sexually bleak marriage only emphasizes a growing emotional emptiness. When a civil rights lawyer offers love and escape, does a good southern lady dare leave her home state and closed society behind? With humor and heartbreak, The Last Resort conveys at once the idyllic charm and the impossible compromises of a lost way of life.

View on Amazon View on AbeBooks View on Kobo View on B.Depository View on eBay View on Walmart

Raised under the racial segregation that kept her family's southern country hotel afloat, Norma Watkins grows up listening at doors, trying to penetrate the secrets and silences of the black help and of her parents' marriage. Groomed to be an ornament to white patriarchy, she sees herself failing at the ideal of becoming a southern lady.

The Last Resort, her compelling memoir, begins in childhood at Allison's Wells, a popular Mississippi spa for proper white people, run by her aunt. Life at the rambling hotel seems like paradise. Yet young Norma wonders at a caste system that has colored people cooking every meal while forbidding their sitting with whites to eat.

Once integration is court-mandated, her beloved father becomes a stalwart captain in defense of Jim Crow as a counselor to fiery, segregationist Governor Ross Barnett. His daughter flounders, looking for escape. A fine house, wonderful children, and a successful husband do not compensate for the shock of Mississippi's brutal response to change, daily made manifest by the men in her home. A sexually bleak marriage only emphasizes a growing emotional emptiness. When a civil rights lawyer offers love and escape, does a good southern lady dare leave her home state and closed society behind? With humor and heartbreak, The Last Resort conveys at once the idyllic charm and the impossible compromises of a lost way of life.

More books from University Press of Mississippi

Cover of the book The Beat by Norma Watkins
Cover of the book Let's Make Some Noise by Norma Watkins
Cover of the book Civil Rights in the White Literary Imagination by Norma Watkins
Cover of the book Conversations with William Maxwell by Norma Watkins
Cover of the book Fourteen on Form by Norma Watkins
Cover of the book Faulkner and Formalism by Norma Watkins
Cover of the book Superman in Myth and Folklore by Norma Watkins
Cover of the book Myself and the World by Norma Watkins
Cover of the book Faulkner and His Contemporaries by Norma Watkins
Cover of the book Working with Disney by Norma Watkins
Cover of the book Chocolate Surrealism by Norma Watkins
Cover of the book The New Great American Writers Cookbook by Norma Watkins
Cover of the book The Painted Screens of Baltimore by Norma Watkins
Cover of the book Wolf Tracks by Norma Watkins
Cover of the book The Confederate and Neo-Confederate Reader by Norma Watkins
We use our own "cookies" and third party cookies to improve services and to see statistical information. By using this website, you agree to our Privacy Policy