Boondock Kollage: Stories from the Hip Hop South by Regina N. Bradley (review)

CLA JOURNAL 125 Book Reviews Bradley, Regina N. Boondock Kollage: Stories from the Hip Hop South. Peter Lang, 2017. 140 pp. ISBN: 1433133032. $46.95 Paperback. In an eerily similar way to Boondock Kollage author Regina N. Bradley, I was also transplanted to Albany, Georgia during my eighth-grade year. I was a military brat and had lived a privileged, international life. I found myself transfixed by a world where the color line held strong and firm, even in the mid- nineties. I hadn’t known that a live oak tree could be haunting and beautiful simultaneously. I was uncultured in the melodious dialect of black folk in South West Georgia who pronounced “back” like the word “bike” and sang the praises of Jimmy’s hotdogs. In 1992 when I landed in Dougherty County, I was schooled in the ways and wisdom of my new environment. I learned to embrace my newly discovered southern identity and haven’t looked back since. Bradley’s collection of stories, Boondock Kollage brings the idiosyncrasies of her hometown to life with all the finesse and detail of local color writing. She indoctrinates her readers in the unique cultural milieu of SOWEGA (South West Georgia, for the outsiders), offering imagery and language that speaks with a truth that any southerner will recognize, regardless of regional affiliation. The first story,“AVisitation from Grace”for instance,honors the tumultuous space of Lake Blackshear and the elder folk who shaped the community and made the Hip Hop South even possible. Bradley’s reverence for place and the people who came before her is evident in her writing. The collection is offered in three parts, each focusing on a specific theme and engaging in intertextual dialogues about the South. Part One, “Reaching Back Around” addresses coherently the importance of remembering and the safety one finds in the healing hands of black women like Auntie Nan. Bradley calls to mind the difficult stories of southern black folk as told by the likes of J. California Cooper in a single line:“His hands were rough like the ones before him, but they didn’t wander” (44). Her knack for storytelling captures the everyday folk, in the vain of Zora Neale Hurston, while also summoning the spirituality embedded in a region that has been both a place of home and a site of horror for generations. Part Two, entitled “Long Division” nods toward Bradley’s writerly kin, Kiese Laymon, and his phenomenal collection by the same title. In “The Beautiful Ones” she grapples with the realities of being young and black in a self-segregating South where black boys go missing. Bradley masterfully demonstrates those original and innovative “Characteristics of Negro Expression” in phrases like “biscuit and fatback thick” (47) and characters nicknamed Picklebean and Scoot. Part Three, “Stitches in Time” takes the reader through the ritualized rigor of black high school band camp and closes with a wonderfully illustrated tale of post-Hurricane Katrina paranoia and trap games. The publisher includes a question bank, rightly anticipating that the stories are ripe for teaching and learning about the South for a new generation. The stories in Boodock Kollage offer a new vision of the South with a language and lifestyle that are as old as time yet vibrantly contemporary. It is no wonder that the 126 CLA JOURNAL Book Reviews anthology has received the endorsement of Jesmyn Ward and Kiese Laymon, two of the most recognizable contemporary southern writers. In the words of Andre Benjamin, “the South got something to say” and has found a worthy mouthpiece in the work of Regina Bradley. Kameelah L.Martin is the author of Conjuring Moments in African American Literature and Envisioning Black Feminist Voodoo Aesthetics, which received the CLA Creative Scholarship Award in 2017. She is the Director of African American Studies at the College of Charleston where she also holds a joint appointment as Professor of African American Studies and English. ...