Confederacy of Silence : A True Tale of the New Old South
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | 4.51 (728 Votes) |
| Asin | : | 067103667X |
| Format Type | : | paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 448 Pages |
| Publish Date | : | 2016-09-11 |
| Language | : | English |
DESCRIPTION:
At the Greenwood Commonwealth Rubin covered sports and local news, wrote obituaries and features and photographed "local color." He also followed the short, happy career of Handy T. From Publishers Weekly With no prospects for employment after his Ivy League graduation in 1988, Rubin, a 21-year-old Jewish New Yorker, accepted a job as a reporter in the heart of the Mississippi Delta. Campbell, an African-American high school quarterback from the projects and this story forms the core of the book. The narrative benefits from Rubin's perceptive observations, but it is his emotional investment in the story that coheres the book's two halves: a memoir of a watershed year in his life and the sordid, convoluted tale of a gross miscarriage of justice. Rubin believed Cam
A Customer said Death and Disillusionment in the Deep South. Okay, I don't live in Mississippi. But I live in Alabama, and I think that qualifies me to say that in 'Confederacy of Silence,' Richard Rubin -- who quotes someone calling him 'a Yankee Jew' as soon as the book gets going -- has drawn one of the most well-rounded and thoughtful portraits of this never-boring place we call The South. Most Northerners would come down here with their minds made up, ready to stereotype, ready to poke fun and use a whole bunch of dialect (when Rubin use. Ted P. Pearce said Confederacy of Silence: The coming of age of Richard Rubin. This was a quick read. Rubin has an energetic writing style, which is easy to follow. He keeps the action moving so it is a page turner. His early portrayal of Greenwood, Mississippi was entertaining. I especially enjoyed his discription of his encounters with "Southern Womanhood." His narration of Handy Campbell's trial was well done. This is a worthwhile book if you can live with Rubin's editorial comments. This book is as much of the coming of age of Rubin as it is about the puta. "A Great Promising Mess" according to Mark Voorhees. There are two distinct stories going on here: Richard Rubin's coming of age as a NY Jew who travels South to report on Greenwood, Mississippi; Handy Campbell's descent from an African Amercian high school football star to defendant in a gruesome murder trial. Neither of the story is probably worthy of a book, and mashing them together doesn't work either. Rubin has some great observations on what he calls the New Old South, and writes about high school sports compellingly. But not n
Returning south to cover the trial, Rubin follows the trail that took Handy from the football field to county jail. Six years later, Rubin, back in New York, learns that Handy is locked up in Greenwood, accused of capital murder. Yet to his surprise, he is warmly welcomed by the townspeople and soon finds his first great scoop in Handy Campbell, a poor, black teen and gifted high school quarterback who goes on to win a spot on Mississippi State's team -- a training ground for the NFL. When Richard Rubin, fresh out of the Ivy League, accepts a job at a daily newspaper in the old Delta town of Greenwood, Mississippi, he is thrust into a place as different from his hometown of New York as any in the country. As the best and worst elements of Mississippi rise up to do battle over one man's fate, Rubin must confront his own unresolved feelings about the confederacy of silence that initially enabled him to thrive in Greenwood but ultimately forced him to leave it.