SOUTH OF HAUNTED DREAMS: A Ride Through...

SOUTH OF HAUNTED DREAMS: A Ride Through Slavery’s Old Backyard by Eddy L. Harris (Touchstone: $11; 254 pp.). The author of this engaging journal traveled through Dixie to explore the past of his family and ethnic group: “I did not travel across Africa to find my roots. I traveled the South to find them. For the South, not Africa, is home to Blackamericans, and Blackamericans as a race are essentially Southerners.” To his considerable surprise, Harris liked much of the contemporary South: The muggy, oppressive backwater populated by bigots that he expected never materialized. In an understated epiphany, Harris discovers he has been as guilty of thinking in stereotypes as the racists he expected to find, confirming the idea that the best travel narratives describe journeys of self-discovery.