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To live outside “The Code,” was to question the rules of society that had governed families in the South for generations. To discover one’s unique identity and live life true to one’s self was not encouraged, especially for a girl. In her memoir, The Magnolia Code, a name Joan Brooks Baker and her sister gave to the unwritten rules they were expected to live by, Baker takes the reader on her personal journey - growing up privileged as the Yankee daughter of dyed-in-the-wool Southerners, in the post–World War II New York City - to living as a photographer in the high desert of New Mexico.

The Magnolia Code decreed that appearances are more important than truth, and the desires of men always trump those of women. Neither sat well with Baker. She might have succumbed to the promise of easier safety the Magnolia Code offered; instead, she persevered in her desire to find her own way, navigating the paradox of the diverging paths of security offered by “the code” and her own sense of who she wanted to be in the world.

Joan Brooks Baker The Magnolia Code

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