Contemporary anthropologists, particularly those of a progressive political bent, are increasingly leery of top-down, researcher-driven approaches to ethnographic research, opting instead for patently reflexive, even subjective stances that, hopefully, provide broader representation of and greater agency for their human subjects. There are both strengths and drawbacks inherent to this approach, as evinced by Angela McMillan Howell’s Raised Up Down Yonder: Growing Up Black in Rural Alabama, a case study of black youth in Hamilton, Alabama. Eschewing the conceit of critical distance—the assumption that someone who’s spent several years in the field in close personal contact with his or her consultants can then act as an autonomous and impartial commentator—McMillan Howell places herself solidly in the center of her ethnography, noting both her family’s roots in the community and her very personal interactions with the people she consulted with in the period she lived there. There is a sense of discovery in meeting the author’s multiply marginalized youth who, as black, Southern, rural, low-income teenagers, are prone to stereotypes and/or prejudices predicated, she argues, on the fact that they are “invisible in our society” (5). The book goes a long way in showing that the South “is a dynamic place that is fostering creative negotiations among its youth,” countering prevalent scholarship focusing on the social problems of African American youth, most often in urban environments.
Although she introduces her monograph as “a simplistic ethnographic portrayal” (ix) without a predominant theoretical frame, it is nevertheless more than detailed field notes, containing much insightful, contextualizing commentary (often relegated to the footnotes) that reveals McMillan Howell’s deep reading and understanding of relevant academic literature. Her highly reflexive observations often blur the line between participant/observer and subject, however, because she was clearly a member, if only temporarily, of the community she studied, someone who couldn’t avoid immersion in various social dramas, or “mess,” that played out in the small, tight-knit community. Her intimate correspondence with her subjects can therefore be viewed as a delicate balance between emic and etic perspectives, between personal memoir and academic ethnography. Thick on description, thinner on theorizing, she cautions that readers trying to “skim” her book for the “bottom line” will “miss the ‘down yonder’ in Down Yonder” (96).
In the first chapter, McMillan Howell adopts the family as the primary unit of analysis, describing the importance of kin relationships across the community, in particular the prevalence of the compound lifestyle, marked by single family homes or neighborhood households and temporary child exchange. The section includes generous excerpts from interviews with “Darnel” and “Kelly” (pseudonyms), two of several youths the reader will come to know well by the end of the book. The conversations are carefully transcribed to emphasize their performative dimensions, including many of the author’s own questions and comments. She then interprets these exchanges, using psychological analysis to suggest what (she thinks) her subjects really mean to say. Interestingly, she notes how her own kin relationships affect her stature in the community, observing that “as a member of a Hamilton family, I had to manage the perception of my ascriptions daily” (44), alluding to the tension—hers and others’—between received heritage and individual agency inherent to such environs.
The second and third chapters examine the local, all-black school (serving pre-kindergarten through twelfth-grade levels) in its struggle to overcome the stigma of being branded a “last chance school” in the national press. McMillan Howell has a sharp eye for detail; her vivid descriptions together with interview excerpts effectively recreate the atmosphere and personal politics of the school. In reflexive statements, she describes, for example, how her own “honeymoon” relationship with the school changed as her perspective broadened, but at times her observations seem overtly impressionistic, and she even admits to a certain “creative license” (73) in deciding which scenarios to present. She does, however, bolster her statements about the harsh political-economic realities impinging on her subjects with pertinent statistics and an adept review of scholarly literature. In comparing the all-black Jay Ellis School with the integrated Carlyle High School in a neighboring community, she brings to light the systemic perpetuation of marginalizing social and racial stereotypes that underlie persistent economic inequalities.
In the fourth chapter, McMillan Howell takes on the local metaphor of “mess” as a cognitive framework Hamiltonians employ to cope with misfortune and to foster social cohesion, thereby perpetuating the status quo. She reports on a popular and successful football coach who was fired amidst much disappointment among locals, using Victor Turner’s four stages of social drama (breach, mounting crisis, redressive actions, and reintegration) to scaffold her arguments. Although it is ultimately not clear how local definitions of “mess” differ significantly from similar social dynamics (i.e., “drama”) in comparable communities—even after much copy has been devoted to various nuances of the term’s usage—the author’s characterization of the football team’s trials and travails is highly evocative, a step toward the “impassioned ethnography” she envisions (212, n. 19).
The fifth chapter focuses on the spiritual life of Hamilton, containing excellent engagement with academic literature (again, mostly relegated to the footnotes) and an in-depth portrayal of “Missy,” another of the book’s six central characters (not including the school itself). Note that, because all of her primary consultants were self-selected, thereby demonstrating a significant degree of proactivity on their part, McMillan Howell’s focal sample is highly qualitative, not quantitative, and probably doesn’t represent the “average” student at Jay Ellis, a criticism she readily acknowledges. Missy’s lengthy commentary reveals much about her character, as do descriptions of Missy’s home, a trailer housing nine people located off an unpaved road. As elsewhere, the author’s intimate correspondence with real people undermines readers’ tendencies to generalize about unfamiliar people and places.
Chapter 6 considers the manifestation of rural and youth identity as mediated by popular media and music, especially hip-hop. Once again McMillan Howell’s reflexivity comes to the fore when she acknowledges her initial mission to fight misogyny in hip-hop lyrics and imagery, followed by her increasing awareness of how young women appropriate these messages in creative and self-expressive ways, leading her to conclude that perhaps she was taking these issues of representation far more seriously than the students were. At times, however, the author’s voice seems overly interpretive, as witnessed by her leading questions during interviews or when she describes “James” as “chocolate brown,” someone who “didn’t look ‘country,’ per se” (169), the type of characterizations a novelist is privy to make but sit less comfortably in an academic milieu. But perhaps this is precisely her point: that observation is never completely objective and it’s time that scholars owned up to it.
In her concluding remarks, McMillan Howell revisits the issue of identity, the intersections of youth, blackness, and especially rurality in the lives of her subjects. In the brief epilogue, she updates, a decade later, her subjects’ personal and professional lives, with brief mention of changing educational laws and the impact of the digital revolution.
In reaffirming her commitment to discover the inner, subjective lives of her people, the author ultimately joins them as one of the book’s main characters, equally revealing her own inner life.
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[Review length: 1186 words • Review posted on November 12, 2014]