Entry 1 Sofi Zharkalli

In her book It Still Moves: Lost Songs, Lost Highways, and The Search for the Next American Music the author Amanda Petrusich gives us as the reader the details that she has concluded from her journey to the American South to find out more about the roots of the American music, as we now know it the Americana music. She says that this is as much about the quest as it is about the prize. But besides the observation that has helped her along the way she also uses questions that help her come to a better conclusion. In page 17 of her book she says " How and why the American South has shaped and nurtured so much successful art is something sociologists ans anthropologist will be bickering about". But she is ready to be an investigator and find the answers to her questions.


The second important component about inquiry writing is reflecting your observations and as well giving a fair amout of details about them. In her book Petrusich gives a wide variety of details to give us a better picture of her journey. For example when she visits Beale Street in Memphis she starts writing about the history of Memphis when blacks and whites were segregated. But through some hard work the African American citizens made a place for themselves in this dominant white community. As some white immigrants left the city and as Petrusich says Memphis got transformed into the " epicenter of Black Southern culture" (pg 28). As we know today Memphis has in fact a large population of African Americans and it is intersting how some things have remained the same.

A successful writer needs to be respective to the ideas of others and listen to them as well. She gives information and opinion when she visited Sun Studio and how this studio has made some remarkable icons. As the reader I do feel that Petrusich goes off on tangents when writing about her journeys to Memphis and Graceland, when talking about the highway she took or what she ate. But at the same time the great amount of detail she gives lets us know the whole process behind writing and recording music. The extra details shape her book to the greater extent in giving it her own taste.

SZ