Defining the Delta: Multidisciplinary Perspectives on the Lower Mississippi River Delta ed. by Janelle Collins (review)

Bringing together essays from experts in various fields, editor Janelle Collins attempts to create a volume that answers a long-standing question: what is the Mississippi Delta? The book is a result of Collins's tenure as editor of the Arkansas Review: A Journal of Delta Studies, an interdisciplinary journal housed at Arkansas State University. Having been in contact with scholars from various fields during her time with the journal, Collins has seized the opportunity to bring the works of these scholars together in one book, with the hope of creating a more in-depth understanding of what constitutes the Delta. Collins puts the chapters of Defining the Delta: Multidisciplinary Perspectives on the Lower Mississippi River Delta in chronological order, beginning with "A Geologist's Perspective on the Mississippi Delta" and followed by chapters on the environment, prehistory, and history of the region. The last two-thirds of the book examines the Delta since European and African American settlement, looking at topics ranging from a sociodemographic examination of the region to heritage tourism. Collins also includes various mediums in the work, most notably a photographic essay on blues musicians. Cultural history, specifically the blues, the impact of the blues, and musicians, receives the most coverage, followed by foodways and literature, which are the focus of the concluding chapters. Unlike many edited collections that tend to feel disjointed due to the varying writing styles of so many different contributors, there is a consistency of style and word usage, which is a compliment to the editor.

The geologic and cultural history of the Delta is certainly tied into the larger picture of U.S. history. Randel Tom Cox's chapter, "A Geologist's Perspective on the Mississippi Delta," is very helpful in tying the geologic makeup of the region to its historical development millions of years later. Anyone familiar with the black belt region of Alabama will immediately recognize the similarities in the area's geologic and cultural development patterns. David H. Dye's chapter from an archaeologist's perspective is helpful, though it does not show that the development of Native American life in the region was much different from the rest of the Southeast. The chapter covering the region's landscape, environment, and geography suggests that the twenty-first-century Delta is not, in fact, unique compared with the areas surrounding it. The illustrations in the chapter are very helpful, however, bringing together important information regarding elevation, crop yields, demographics, and even venereal disease to make a strong case for how the area's geography and environment have shaped the human landscape. Though it is one of the shorter chapters in the book, Mary Sue Passe-Smith's chapter on the climate of the Delta is interesting. Passe-Smith readily points out that the region is not different from the rest of the South and that its climate is not cohesive, making the area hard to define as a region. The author makes a strong case with a lot of data to justify titling her chapter, "The Death-Dealing Delta: A Climatological Viewpoint."

The modern human face of the Delta begins with chapter 7, "Sociodemographic Snapshots of the Mississippi Delta." The historian's perspective follows in chapter 8, and Seth C. McKee's chapter on politics and race is very helpful in explaining how the region developed in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. As mentioned in the introduction to this review, the remaining part of the book looks at the culture of the region, from folklore and music, to food and literature. It is a fascinating tour of the region and how most people in the twenty-first century define it.

While the authors do not cover the same specific spatial areas in their individual chapters, they do use the same general terminology, but the...