Category: Essays

Southern Legitimacy Statement: After studying at Southern Illinois University, I left to follow all roads South and South East from Alabama to Texas, and finally, Tucson. I hang with people who believe in biscuits and gravy the way others believe...

Southern Legitimacy Statement: I’m an Appalachian woman, born and bred. I grew up in West Virginia (in a middle class, blue-collar, working-class family). My parents were not college educated but knew they wanted their children to be and stressed achievement...

Southern Legitimacy Statement: I grew up in rural North Carolina. Though I drink my tea with a bit less sugar these days, the soles of my feet are still tough from going barefoot. I never sit in grass or weeds...

SOUTHERN LEGITIMACY STATEMENT: I grew up crossing the Mississippi River each weekend to go four-wheeling, fishing, and running around barefoot. From Quincy, IL to Maywood, Missouri (20 short back-road minutes from Hannibal, MO, home of Mark Twain), my dad and...

Southern Legitimacy Statement: I had two mules by the time I was 18 — old Jake and Sara Jane. I learn to plow the rich black dirt fields of East Texas at 14. That’s when I learned “A farting mule...

And here is my Southern Legitimacy Statement: I was born in Jackson, TN, and grew up in Johnson City, TN, living there from the time I was two until I was twenty-four. I’ve lived in Mississippi and Georgia, but most...

Southern Legitimacy Statement: I am a Gulf-Coast Southerner, through and through. I was born in New Orleans, Louisiana. For the first half of my life, I lived in uptown until Hurricane Katrina. After swimming out of my home and all...

Southern Legitimacy Statement: I speak with a muddled southern accent. I lived in the north all my life, but my father’s family comes from the south, and on their trek north they didn’t bring money, brains, better ideas, or even...

Southern Legitimacy Statement: I am a Kentucky boy who is born and raised in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains that is telling a story about going to the Dollar Store. Plus Fried Taters touch my soul. A Trip to...

Southern Legitimacy Statement | My Dad was born at the Hotel Dieu in New Orleans, and none of his family had ever ventured far past the Mississippi River before he did. Though born in Texas, I grew up in Belle...

Southern Legitimacy Statement — I was born, and have lived, and have not left for more than 25 days, an area bound to the east by I-65 in Birmingham and to the west by Lurleen B. Wallace Blvd in Tuscaloosa,...

Southern Legitimacy Statement: I was raised dirt poor on a poor dirt farm in eastern North Carolina. I have written since I was small and have always been fascinated by people’s motivations. I somehow was able to get a good...

The Witch, The Egg, and the Cure Imagine that you have asthma. You are ten years old. Your life just started yet every day feels like a step closer to the end. You try to take a deep breath but...