“Fruit Stand, Highway 441, Georgia.” All photographs by Tema Stauffer © The artist. Courtesy Tracey Morgan Gallery, Asheville, North Carolina

My mother was born in a tiny structure that once was a slave cabin. Her natal town was Eatonton, Georgia, a place that still exists, the birthplace of Joel Chandler Harris and Alice Walker, as well as other storytellers whose names are remembered only by the land.

Every summer Mama would drive my sisters and me down from our home in North Carolina to Georgia. We’d turn off Interstate 20 and hit Highway 441. Close to the…