Category: Essays

Essays

Cecile Dixon: Memoir : Nov 2021

Southern Legitamacy Statement I was born and raised in a part of the country not thought of a typically southern. I was raised in Estill County, Kentucky, which lies beside the Kentucky River at the foothills of the rugged Appalachian...
Essays

James Ryer: Essay: Oct 2021

Southern Legitimacy Statement: I was born in the South, raised and educated there, and still choose to live there. From my beginnings and my early perception of the world as I knew it, my political perspective has continually evolved over...
Essays

Terry Barr: Essay: Oct 2021

Southern Legitimacy Statement As a native southerner and recovering Alabamian, I understand that we are definitely NOT living in a “Post-Racial” era. We have never spent enough time repairing the damage hundreds of years of slavery and discrimination have done...
Essays

Daniel Melchior Jr: Memoir: Sept 2021

Southern Legitimacy Statement: I grew up in the Ohio River Valley, more specifically Southern Indiana, the South of the Midwest. My town bordered Kentucky so we argued about Hoosier and Bluegrass basketball while eating brain sandwiches, a regional deep-fried treat....
Essays

Ryan Vale McGonigle: Memoir: Sept. 2021

Southern Legitimacy Statement: Born and raised in North Carolina to parents graciously welcomed by the South, I have a strange kind of Southern legitimacy. My roots and birth certificate proclaim me as native, but my family’s heritage says otherwise. This...
Essays

Ashley Kemker: Essay: Sept. 2021

Southern Legitimacy Statement: I was born in the North, to two Southern parents, finally returning to the South, to the peninsula inhabited for several centuries by my mother’s people in my tenth year. My hands have quick caught green anoles;...
Essays

Therese Beale : Essay : August 2021

Southern Legitimacy Statement: After growing up in the Old Dominion, a creeping dissonance and yearning for a different world led me to leave. Though I’ve happily rebadged myself from Virginian to Pacific Northwesterner, I still have a hankering for warm...
Essays

Anthony Picardi : Essay : August 2021

My southern legitimacy Statement: I moved to a small farm on Virginia’s Eastern Shore in 2004 on which I put a conservation easement. The community of woods, pond, fields and salt marsh will be forever protected from the ravages of...