Down Home: Going South in Rita Williams-Garcia's Novels

This article considers the South and its influence on the protagonists in Rita Williams-Garcia's Like Sisters on the Homefront (1995) and the trilogy comprising One Crazy Summer (2010), P.S. Be Eleven (2013), and Gone Crazy in Alabama (2015), while situating the novels within the tradition of migration texts. Particularly, it examines Williams-Garcia's depiction of the South as home in Like Sisters and the trilogy and analyzes how their respective protagonists, Gayle and Delphine, learn to negotiate southern aspects of their identities by embracing or resisting the South as they move toward defining themselves and growing in personal agency.