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Ted Ownby. Hurtin’ Words: Debating Family Problems in the Twentieth-Century South.

2019; Oxford University Press; Volume: 125; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1093/ahr/rhz691

1937-5239

Kristin Celello,

Historical Studies on Reproduction, Gender, Health, and Societal Changes

Hurtin’ Words: Debating Family Problems in the Twentieth-Century South, a study of how southerners defined and debated the problems of family life throughout the twentieth century, compellingly addresses significant gaps in several previously disparate historiographies. While the history of families, black and white, has long been central to the study of the South through the end of the nineteenth century, it has been subsumed under other categories, as Ted Ownby notes, for the twentieth. Most examinations of family life in the twentieth century more generally, in turn, purport to tell a national story and to minimize regional differences. But employing an impressively wide array of sources and voices, from social science literature to the courts to feminist fiction, from Martin Luther King Jr. to Lynyrd Skynyrd to Jerry Falwell, Ownby forcefully argues that how southerners talked about families is essential to understanding many facets of their lives in the...