Southern Legitimacy Statement: Skinny, straight-haired, fishing for antlions in the dry dust of Faulkner’s tool shed at Roanoke. Waiting, watching the evening in the branches of tall magnolias. I am there in 2004, as the cicadas, after seventeen years of silence, emerge and turn the state into a hum. I…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: Elizabeth Byard grew up in Arkansas but currently lives in rural Oklahoma with her husband, cats and llamas. They are in the final stages of becoming licensed foster parents. Lucky Girl I’ve come to terms with a lot of things in my life. I will never be…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: We were a prototypical southern nuclear family. My Papaw came up in the Great Smokey Mountains, near Farner Tennessee and Cherokee North Carolina. When he was nine, he lost track of the time one summer evening, squirrel hunting up on the mountain, and he avoided a sound…

My Southern Legitimacy statement says I have been printed in North Carolina, baby-sat there, and trained for the military with Tennessee’s 278th Regiment (activated for Korean encounter) at Fort Devens, MA. Decision Borne by April Water I was fishing off the bridge over the Ipswich River, a few hundred yards…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: Since my last Dead Mule submission, I’ve only grown more southern, moving south by 7 degrees of latitude to the Sunshine State, which, incidentally, is where I was born. A North Carolina resident for almost 20 years, I maintain a personal map of all the Bojangles in…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: Born in the hill country of northeast Mississippi, educated at Mississippi State University and Mississippi University for Women, living just outside the state capital of Jackson, Mississippi–Julie Whitehead is about as Mississippi as it gets. Above My Raising I came from white trash in north Mississippi.  I…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: I was born and raised in Florida and am still living here, two miles from Georgia. My dad and grandparents were also native Floridians, and I can’t find an ancestor who was born or lived north of the Mason-Dixon line. Mom was born in southern Georgia and crossed…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: Yes, I lived so close to where you do. I studied at Wake Forest University for nearly two months… I like that area greatly. The weather has a kind of healing effect. I was seriously compromised before I went there. People there are also very warm and…

Here’s my Southern Legitimacy Statement: I live in southeastern Ohio. That counts, doesn’t it? After all, maybe being southern is a more a state of mind more than an actual place. And, anyway, this place where I live? It sure feels southern. Or, at least, southern-ish. What I’m saying is…

Southern Literacy statement: I am a spinster with a Bible and a gun who grew up reading Fannie Flagg, Jerry Clower and Lewis Grizzard. I have seen a squirrel get loose in a Baptist church. I have ridden a mule in Bonifay, Florida. Please do not hold my disdain for…

I’ve published with you a couple of times, but I don’t mind updating my SOUTHERN Legit statement. I identify weeds, mushrooms, trees, bugs, and wildflowers. I’m fond of dwarf irises, rue anenomes, foam flowers and, of course, hen of the woods. I know that mullberries and black locusts will take…

My Southern Legitimacy is in evidence when I tell you that yesterday I wore a dress and stockings to attend a ladies’ tea party where we drank champagne all afternoon. Most of the ladies are aging exotic dancers, and had the shoes to prove it. It was delightful. Airline Lost…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: I grew up in North Carolina, within six miles of the land where my ancestor settled in the 1700s. Lacking frequent snow fall as children, my siblings, cousins, and I improvised. We used dried horse manure in our game, guard the fort. We lobbed these so-called horse apples…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: I’ve lived in Oklahoma almost my whole life. People who know nothing sometimes call Oklahoma the “Midwest,” but we say y’all here and eat gravy and know the importance of good manners, so every good Okie is a Southerner. Also, my momma made us promise that when she…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: Born in Chicago with maternal grandparents, who went back to the drawing board for childcare, probably saved me from a stint in Joliet. Mom was a “wild-child” in the late 1930’s and early 1940’s. Nana solved that by hiring two strong-willed black nannies from the South. Miss Roberta…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: I’m an ex-pat from Seattle and still miss the mind-your-own-business culture of my home and never, ever get used to waving to strangers or to tucking in my polo. But there is an honor and a history and a courtesy in the South that is noble and heartwarming….

Southern Legitimacy Statement: I’m a debutant, a beachcomber, and a native of South Carolina. The place of my most vivid memories was my grandmother’s farm — shucking corn, snapping beans, and hand-churning peach ice cream. Daddy’s Home It’s 5:00 and today, like every day, Mom is in the kitchen cooking dinner….

Southern Legitimacy Statement: Now retired, I devoted the past thirty-six years teaching at Wabash College in Crawfordsville, Indiana. But I was born in Johnston County, raised in Burlington, responded to frequent calls from Emerald Isle, the lower island of the Outer Banks, to relax, and have known North Carolina as…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: I was born by the river — the Mississippi River, that is, and in its oldest city, Natchez. I and my family are Southern Gothic with the humidity to prove it. We’ve got suicides, antebellum homes, wealth, poverty, slaves, violence, heartbreak, snakes, armadillos, dogs, cats and enough guilt…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: In 2004, after living in Savannah, Georgia, for three years, a stray dog wandered into my front yard. I guided him to the back yard by his blue collar. My other half printed out “Found Dog” posters and tacked them onto neighborhood street signs. No one called….

Southern Legitimacy Statement: I grew up in a small town in South Carolina among the rivers and pines and sandy dirt roads. My mother, a French Huguenot from Charleston, SC, taught me that we have the ocean in our blood and pluff mud in our souls. The water with which…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: Sela wrote about herself instead of writing a SLS but we forgive her. Read the following essay and you’ll see why. “I am a ninth grade student at Mamaroneck High School. I am fourteen years old, and love sing, dance, and spend time with my family. I…

Southern legitimacy statement: I was born and raised in Florida and am still living here, two miles from Georgia. My dad and grandparents were also native Floridians, and I can’t find a maternal or paternal ancestor who was born or lived north of the Mason-Dixon line. Mom was born in southern…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: My grandmother raised me on cornbread and southern stories, the anecdotes of her girlhood among the cotton rows. The Wool-Gatherer I buy the strawberries grown and shipped from Watsonville because my grandmother’s hands once picked them there. Nestled safely in the center most part of California, this…