By L’Attitudes Staff
Posted September 9, 2011
The Last Resort by Norma Watkins is published by the University Press of Mississippi.
"What a miracle of time travel this memoir is! With the deliciously specific recall of a loving, inquisitive child, Norma Watkins places us inside the Mississippi in which she grew up, yet she exposes at the same time the suppressions and silences that held her world in place. Watkins writes with the irresistible honesty that led her to become the woman who couldn't be quiet anymore." -Lynne Barrett, author of "Magpies" and "The Secret Names of Women"
Norman Watkins grew up in a segregated Mississippi and remembers well the lessons taught there. Her book, "The Last Resort, Taking the Mississippi Cure," commemorates the 150th anniversary of the start of the Civil War.
A retired Miami-Dade Community College professor, Watkins will share her memories and read from her memoir Wednesday, Sept. 14, at Gallery on Greene, 606 Greene St., Key West. She'll also sign books following the reading, which begins at 5 p.m.
The Last Resort begins in childhood at Allison's Wells, a Mississippi spa popular among "proper" white people, run by her aunt.
Life at the rambling hotel seems like paradise, Watkins recalls, even though she wondered about a caste system that has colored people cooking every meal, yet forbids their sitting with whites to eat.
Once integration is court-mandated, her father becomes a stalwart captain in defense of Jim Crow as a counselor to fiery, segregationist Governor Ross Barnett.
His daughter flounders, looking for escape. A fine house, wonderful children, and a successful husband do not compensate for the shock of Mississippi's brutal response to change, daily made manifest by the men in her home.
When a civil rights lawyer offers love and escape, does a good southern lady dare leave her home state and closed society behind?
Former Miami Herald reporter Madeleine Blais writes: "Norma Watkins's The Last Resort: Taking the Mississippi Cure joins the esteemed ranks of Carson McCullers and Harper Lee. By going through the eyes of the perfect spy, that most marginal of creatures, a young female child, to nail the complexities, hypocrisy, and even dangers in the adult world, Watkins winds up giving her readers a gift of enduring beauty."
The St. Petersburg Times review notes that "Watkins began writing The Last Resort long before 'The Help,' Kathryn Stockett's fictional account of Jackson in the civil rights era, was published.
"Stockett grew up there, too, but is young enough to have to imagine her story back to that time - and to be able to imagine its ending filled with comeuppance and uplift. Watkins lived it, and her story's ending is far less rosy," writes the St. Pete Times' Colette Bancroft.
For more information about the Sept. 14 reading, call 923-4778.
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Mississippi Memoir Captures Hurt of Racism
