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Joe Smith is a self-taught artist from the Mississippi Delta. Although he was born in 1967, much
of Smith's early childhood autobiography reads as if it were set in Flannery O'Connor's day. The same themes
runs through his work: bigotry, alcoholism, insanity, isolation, abuse, and good old rural
Southern poverty. Ordained into the priesthood at age 12, Smith spent much of his childhood comforting a
manic-depressive mother, who threatened suicide almost daily and enduring the hot temper of an alcoholic father.
Smith's extended family is also present in these stories, and the clan is decidedly Southern Appalachian in character.
Economic migrants from the hills, Smith's grandfather and his 16 brothers and sisters moved down into
the Delta to work as tenant farmers and eventually all settled en masse along the highway
south of the town of Greenville. As Smith observes, "From home, it was a half mile to the levee, and except for spouses, there
wasn't anyone living in the 10 houses and mobile homes along the way who wasn't a blood relative."
The Smith enclave is a row of sad houses separated by junk cars, broken farm equipment and weeds. This landscape
drives the mood of Smith's stories. In stark contrast to his home life, Smith is sent to one of the new
private schools created in response to enforced desegregation,
and his classmates are the children of some of the most wealthy and influential planters in the Mississippi
Delta. Needless to say, Smith is not accepted by his peers and he spends most of his time at school alone in the library.
Smith's autobiography tells bizarre and even horrific stories tempered with compassion and humor. [read the short story collection] |
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