delta (miss. : region)

Near the end of her life, Mary Mann Hamilton (1866 - c.1936) began recording her experiences in the backwoods of the Mississippi Delta. The result is this astonishing first-person account of a pioneer woman who braved grueling work, profound tragedy, and a pitiless wilderness (she and her family faced floods, tornadoes, fires, bears, panthers, and snakes) to protect her home in the early American South.

Black and white photographs document the lives of African Americans in the Delta region of northwest Mississippi in the early 1990s.

Sixteen-year-old Swayze Barksdale comes of age in the southern town of Fisk's Landing in the summer of 1951, his life defined by the Korean War raging overseas, and his job of playing "Taps" at the funerals of the town's fallen soldiers.

The author discusses the different stages of her life, beginning with her childhood in the segregated Deep South in the 1940s, and tells of her criminal activities, her involvement with the Civil Rights Movement, and her eventual pursuit of a Ph.D.