Mobile, Alabama, claims the nation's oldest Mardi Gras tradition. Its 4 weeks of parades, balls, and social events (preceded by months of preparation) are an integral part of the city's identity, economy, projected personality, and sense of pride.
Yet studies of Mobile Mardi Gras are few, with most histories authored by White elites connected to exclusive mystic societies. Thus, Isabel Machado's Carnival in Alabama: Marked Bodies and Invented Traditions in Mobile not only adds much needed content to the literature, but it also provides a neutral account. She writes from an observer's perspective, supported by personal interviews and research in local archives. Her writing is clean, insightful, and fast-paced, both accessible and informative for a general audience and stimulating for academics.
As Machado notes, people often experience community traditions in vastly different ways; Mobile Mardi Gras is no exception. Cross-dressing during Mardi Gras, for example, may “publicly embody [a normally...
