Classics

100 Must-Read Works of Southern Literature

Emily Gatlin

Staff Writer

Emily Gatlin is a former independent bookstore manager turned freelance writer. Follow her antics on Twitter: @emilygatlin

A Riot reader from the Midwest was so intrigued by my love letter to Flannery O’Connor, she tweeted me and asked if I had a copy of my Southern literature class reading list. She always wanted to dig into Southern lit, but didn’t know where to start. I suddenly realized that if you aren’t exposed to Southern lit, you really don’t know where to start. Sure, you’ve read To Kill a Mockingbird, and yeah… that Faulkner guy was from Mississippi (let’s face it, Faulkner’s words ain’t easy on the brain). But what else is there?

william-faulknerI started to make a list of Southern books I had in my personal library, and I had around 70 that I would be willing to tell a stranger to read. Bookseller extraordinaire Joe Hickman of Lemuria Books in Jackson, Mississippi helped me fill in some gaps, and we exchanged a few notes on upcoming releases. Lemuria is by far the best bookstore in the South because they have a huge staff full of people who know their stuff. Plus, they have ALL THE BOOKS. Seriously. The books overflow off the shelves all over the floor. Great place.

A few notes: some authors have so many good books, I just listed the ones I liked the most. In the case of Faulkner, I picked his more accessible novels. There is some really great nonfiction included and a lot of really great nonfiction NOT included. I had to cut it off at some point.

I suggest you pour yourself a glass of single barrel bourbon, make a batch of cheese straws, and start reading.

 

  1. A Childhood: The Biography of a Place – Harry Crews
  2. A Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole
  3. A Death in the Family – James Agee
  4. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn – Mark Twain
  5. Airships – Barry Hannah
  6. A Land More Kind Than Home – Wiley Cash
  7. A Lesson Before Dying – Ernest Gaines
  8. All Over But the Shoutin’ – Rick Bragg
  9. All the King’s Men – Robert Penn Warren
  10. Apostles of Light – Ellen Douglas
  11. As I Lay Dying – William Faulkner
  • A Streetcar Named Desire – Tennessee Williams
  • A Time to Kill – John Grisham
  • The Awakening – Kate Chopin
  • Bastard Out of Carolina – Dorothy Allison
  • Bats Out of Hell – Barry Hannah
  • Big Bad Love – Larry Brown
  • Black Boy – Richard Wright
  • Blues All Around Me – B.B. King
  • Brother to a Dragonfly – Will Campbell
  • Burning Bright: Stories – Ron Rash
  • Before Women Had Wings – Connie May Fowler
  • Blood Meridian – Cormac McCarthy
  • Can’t Be Satisfied: The Life and Times of Muddy Waters – Robert Gordon
  • Child of God – Cormac McCarthy
  • The Civil War: A Narrative (I-III) – Shelby Foote
  • Cold Mountain – Charles Frazier
  • Cold Sassy Tree – Olive Ann Burns
  • *The Collected Stories of Eudora Welty – Eudora Welty
  • The Color Purple – Alice Walker
  • The Complete Stories – Flannery O’Connor
  • The Courting of Marcus Dupree – Willie Morris
  • Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter – Tom Franklin
  • Daisy Fay and the Miracle Man – Fannie Flagg
  • Deep Blues – Robert Palmer
  • Deliverance – James Dickey
  • Delta Wedding – Eudora Welty
  • Ellen Foster – Kaye Gibbons
  • The End of California – Steve Yarbrough
  • Every Day By the Sun – Dean Faulkner Wells
  • The Fall of the House of Zeus – Curtis Wilkie
  • Father of the Blues – W. C. Handy
  • Fire in the Morning – Elizabeth Spencer
  • Geronimo Rex – Barry Hannah
  • Give My Poor Heart Ease: Voices of the Mississippi Blues – William Ferris
  • Gone with the Wind – Margaret Mitchell
  • The Great Santini – Pat Conroy
  • The Heart is a Lonely Hunter – Carson McCullers
  • Hell at the Breech – Tom Franklin
  • House of Prayer No. 2 – Mark Richard
  • I Hate to See That Evening Sun Go Down – William Gay
  • It Wasn’t All Dancing and Other Stories – Mary Ward Brown
  • Joe – Larry Brown
  • The Keepers of the House – Shirley Ann Grau
  • The Kitchen House – Kathleen Grissom
  • Known World – Edward P Jones
  • Lanterns on the Levee – William Alexander Percy
  • The Last Gentleman – Walker Percy
  • The Last Girls – Lee Smith
  • The Last of the Southern Girls – Willie Morris
  • Light in August – William Faulkner
  • The Little Friend – Donna Tartt
  • Long Time Leaving: Dispatches from Up South – Roy Blount Jr.
  • Look Homeward, Angel – Thomas Wolfe
  • The Mind of the South – W.J. Cash
  • The Moviegoer – Walker Percy
  • Mudbound – Hillary Jordan
  • The Mysterious Secret of the Valuable Treasure – Jack Pendarvis
  • Native Guard – Natasha Trethewey
  • North Toward Home – Willie Morris
  • Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All – Allan Gurganus
  • Once Upon a Time When We Were Colored – Clifton Taulbert
  • One Foot in Eden – Ron Rash
  • One Mississippi – Mark Childress
  • The Optimist’s Daughter – Eudora Welty
  • Other Voices, Other Rooms – Truman Capote
  • Poachers – Tom Franklin
  • The Prince of Tides – Pat Conroy
  • Provinces of Night – William Gay
  • The Quiet Game – Greg Iles
  • Raney – Clyde Edgerton
  • Rising Tide: The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 – John Barry
  • Run with the Horseman – Ferrol Sams
  • Salvage the Bones – Jesmyn Ward
  • Salvation on Sand Mountain – Dennis Covington
  • The Secret Life of Bees – Sue Monk Kidd
  • Serena – Ron Rash
  • The Sharpshooter Blues – Lewis Nordan
  • Shiloh and Other Stories – Bobbie Ann Mason
  • The Sound and the Fury – William Faulkner
  • Southern Belly: A Food Lover’s Companion – John T. Edge
  • Sweet Soul Music: Rhythm and Blues and the Southern Dream of Freedom – Peter Guralnick
  • Their Eyes Were Watching God – Zora Neale Hurston
  • To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee
  • Victory Over Japan – Ellen Gilchrist
  • Walking Across Egypt – Clyde Edgerton
  • Welding with Children – Tim Gautreaux
  • Wise Blood – Flannery O’Connor
  • Work Shirts for Madmen – George Singleton
  • Zeitoun – Dave Eggers

    Coming soon:

    1. The Death of Santini – Pat Conroy (Nan A. Talese)
    2. Lookaway, Lookaway by Wilton Barnhardt (St. Martin’s Press)
    3. Men We Reaped – Jesmyn Ward (Bloomsbury USA)
    4. The Realm of Last Chances – Steve Yarbrough (Knopf)
    5. The Resurrectionist – Matthew Guinn (W.W. Norton)
    6. Rivers – Michael Farris Smith (Simon & Schuster)
    7. Someone Else’s Love Story – Joshilyn Jackson (William Morrow)
    8. Sycamore Row – John Grisham (Doubleday)
    9. This Dark Road to Mercy – WIley Cash (William Morrow)
    10. The Tilted World – Tom Franklin and Beth Ann Fennelly (William Morrow)

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