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As fall settles over your bones and the winter looms in the air, fire up the latest issue of Wraparound South, a literary “leisure stop” with a feel of endless summer. This literary journal publishes free, online issues twice a year featuring contemporary writing about the American South, often from marginalized voices. Don’t let the unassuming title and easygoing style fool you (especially you Yankees), the virtual pages of Wraparound South contain top-notch writing, that deepens the canon of Southern poetry, short stories, and narrative nonfiction. Issues also feature occasional international writing that draws parallels with Southern culture and history. Most contributors boast piles of other publications, a couple debut novels or chapbooks, and various literary accolades.

The Summer/Fall 2018 issue of Wraparound South centers around the word “root,” and the poems in this issue stretch and twirl like the roots of climbing roses, exposing the reader to both blossom and thorn. Afua Ansong’s prose poem “Duafe” shows the complicated relationship African-American women have with their hair and the sociopolitical undercurrents of Black hair with the backdrop of the simple act of getting her hair buzzcut. She describes her haircut in rich, flowing language such as “the doves turned their wings inside out to spare their eyes to this wonder, this woman thing.” Despite what society, the Black community, or any individual thinks of Ansong’s choice, she is happy. When she looks at herself she thinks “when I cut those loose permed strands off my head, what being could not call me African?” and “those golden peacock earrings revealed the wooden frame of my face, burned by the rich American sun.” She has rid herself of the thing that society says makes her a woman, the same thing that should connect her to her heritage, yet she feels more like a woman and more in touch with her roots than ever. Ansong’s poem is much like Wraparound South—an ambling, scenic path that takes you somewhere far more important than you expected. This is the only prose poem, and the other handful of poems are free verse and lean on the longer side.

Read the full review here.