Category: Essays

Southern Legitimacy Statement: I am a farm girl who still reaches for her gum boots to go feed the birds. I grew up in the arms of a grandmother who worked 40 hours a week for 36 years in a...

Southern Legitimacy Statement: You can’t go much further south than living in Miami Beach. Although most would disqualify my city as The South, I promise I can fish, cook collard greens, and sing all the lyrics to Southern rap songs...

Southern Legitimacy Statement: Though I live in Massachusetts now, I was born and raised in Houston, and part of my heart will always be in Texas. I know some folks don’t call Texas the South, but I always have, seeing...

Southern Legitimacy Statement: Honestly, I don’t really have a Southern Legitimacy Statement except to say my grandfather was born in Texas. He was orphaned at 3 (father was knifed in a barroom on stilts, mother died shortly after from a...

Southern Legitimacy Statement: This work focuses on my relationship with my father and meat, and it takes place in the polarized city: Houston, Texas. Houston is my birth place as well as my homeland. I remained in the South for...

Southern Legitimacy Statement: Although I was born at home in the hills of Kentucky like a true hillbilly, I did not belong. My parents were back-to-the-land hippies from New York and Massachusetts – art students looking to make the world...

Southern Legitimacy Statement:  Drive east from Southern California and you’ll eventually run out of road. That’s when I knew I was in “the South,” where I could disappear, and the real me could burst forth! Wallpapering bathrooms for a housing...

I am a professional dirt bag and failed Independent Fundamentalist Baptist who grew up in the oil fields of west Texas. I am also poet, writer, educator, translator, and activist. My work has been published in English and Spanish and...

Southern Legitimacy Statement: Get used to the fact that when you move to South Carolina you will hear these every day: “Yes Sir, Yes Ma’am,” and “what church do you go to?” When you walk into a restaurant or fast...

Southern Legitimacy Statement: My momma and papa, both teachers, brought me into this world in a small town in the ancient land of Bessarabia, and they always wanted me to be a…teacher! So, I became one, which got me in...

Southern legitimacy statement T. Jeremy Smith grew up on a dairy and tobacco farm in South Central Kentucky. After spending much of his childhood running from his older brother, Jeremy spent 20 years as an adult running from the degenerative...