The culture of the South nourishes its artists through close family ties, religion, music and a strong sense of history. Mississippi, for example, has always been known for its rich literary and brilliant musical heritage even though it also has the highest illiteracy rate of any state. It's been the home of William Faulkner, Eudora Welty, Tennessee Williams, and Muddy Waters.

Today, a new generation of artists is emerging from this place that some say embodies the best of American culture, despite poverty and social ills. Through the artists profiled in this film, we see how the spirit of place inspires their creativity. These artists represent different racial, educational, and socio-economic backgrounds.

Barry Hannah is considered the "most outrageous writer of the contemporary South." He is one of the leading practitioners of neo-Southern Gothic and an heir to the Southern literary tradition in his love of language. David Malone, a blues musician tells how his father, also a famous bluesman, influenced his music. Lewis Nordan, author of Wolf Whistle (about the lynching of Emmett Till) won the1994 Southern Book Award. The novel is written as a fairy tale, because as Nordan says, the tragedy had become "absorbed into my bloodstream as white guilt and mythology." Donna Tartt has been writing poems since the age of five and started her critically acclaimed first novel while at the University of Mississippi. .Actor Morgan Freeman, perhaps the most famous of the artists, recalls a happy youth in a segregated small town, surrounded by caring adults.

"The solidarity of the black community, the aura of fundamentalist convictions, the distinctive qualities of Mississippi blues, and the ineffable sense of place that fuel the novelists' work emerge as Rosemary Moritz's documentary meanders around the state, capturing the peculiar love-hate relationship that grips its native sons and daughters."
Booklist

Bronze Apple, National Educational Media Festival, 1998
Los Angeles International Film Festival, 1997