Category: Fiction

Southern Legitimacy Statement In August there was always the river. On dog days, school beckoning, the joy of uninterrupted time between the morning and evening chores long absorbed by a sun that had flattened your expectations of what summer would bring, I seemed to always find myself at the river. Some people are drawn to fire, others to water, moving water that is, even if the movement is nearly imperceptible, and in my South the summer heat warned me away from fire. It was the river inching through the thick woods that lured me to come, preferably alone, to come and clear away a spot to sit among the dead leaves and rocks and branches, to come and immerse myself in the stream of thoughts and dreams and ambitions that, yet unbruised by the world, raced inside the visitor sitting above the patient river.

Southern Legitimacy Statement: Moving to Florida when I was sixteen, we crossed the border under the shadow of a billboard which read, "This is Wallace Country." I turned to my mother and asked who Wallace was. I had a lot to learn about The South. Now, I'll slip in a ya'll once in a while and I love grits and Southern Magnolia blooms, but I still hate gators and that horrid kudzu.

Southern Legitimacy Statement: I know what a crawdad hole looks like and how to make sassafras tea. I know the south is a place where you can get your heart broke. I'm not the only one with that knowledge.

Southern Legitimacy Statement: My Mama celebrated the birth of my son by having her picture taken in front of the Jefferson Davis Memorial stone on First and Coliseum Streets around the corner from her house in the Garden District. When she died, I put her ashes in a Ziplock bag and flew her to La Guardia. Today she’s shelved in an urn of her breakfront in my house on Long Island. My black Labrador named Comus—in honor of the parade (Mama was a Comus maid)—has never been down south.

Southern Legitimacy Statement: I was born when mama was making Benedictine and daddy was drinking a Mint Julep. They were supposed to be at The Derby, and they had fine outfits. Mama had a long white dress with embroidered flowers and a huge white hat with flowers—lots and lots of yellow, pink, and white flowers. Daddy had a seersucker suit with a smart straw hat. Mama handed the Benedictine over to Granny Bray, who had come to stay with Sister. Daddy lit his pipe and said, “For this, I’m missing the Derby,” then smiled with his blue eyes and lifted my mama and carried her to the car.

Southern Legitimacy Statement: I'm one of those South Arkansas kids, born and raised in the cotton fields of Chicot County and weaned on sweet tea and fried chocolate pies. I'm one of those kids who has slapped a jillion mosquitoes dead on my neck, and combed my legs for a jillion seed ticks, and fought a jillion G.I. Joes in the trenches of my rain-washed back yard gulley. In my youth, when I wasn't outracing three-legged coon dogs on three-wheeled ATVs (me on the wheeler, not the dog), I was cane-pole fishing in the 43 Canal, down near Grandma Bernice's house in the swarmy Dermott Delta. Under Grandma's dusty quilt I learned to read and write, and on the brown banks of the swimming hole I learned that a good story can sometimes be one of Dad's good ol' fishing lies.

Southern Legitimacy Statement: Although I was raised in New York and lived in Iowa for five years, I saw nothing strange in a local newscaster breaking into the TV show I was watching to warn us about the quarter inch of snow predicted overnight.

Southern Legitimacy Statement: I consider myself very much a southern writer, and my work generally revolves around illuminating the social struggles of where I am from. If this particular piece is not for you I look forward to submitting to you in the future and continue the courtship. Have a wonderful day.

Southern Legitimacy Statement: You couldn’t make my husband leave the South if you set a pack of dogs on him -- he’s spent his whole life in North Carolina but for a spell in Vietnam and that was against his will. I, on the other hand, landed here by accident and have spent some good years plotting my escape. Born and raised Yankee, don’t you know."

Southern Legitimacy Statement: I’m Southern because a photo of Robert E. Lee hung in my childhood home but I was named for a bona fide scalawag. I root for Lost Causes like Tar Heel football and Democrats. I’m Southern because when I lived in New York, and some sassy New York City girl teased me about my accent, I said, “What accent?” I think Pabst Blue Ribbon tastes like piss. I hear trains in the night. I still hate Jesse Helms and that son-of-a-bitch has been dead for years. I’m Southern because my momma’s buried in the shadow of Thomas Wolfe’s angel. I’m as Southern as the Blue Ridge Mountains, which is where I’m from. Is that Southern enough for you?

Southern Legitimacy Statement: I say ya'll and I declare and I think billboards quoting scripture are as natural as trees. So whatever ya'll may say otherwise, I declare in the presence of the Almighty, that's southern.

Southern Legitimacy Statement: Being born and raised in Beijing doesn't make me a Southerner. But two-stepping to George and Merle, wearing bolo ties and spurs on my boots, raising rabbits and barrel racing do. Most of all, it's the drinking of Southern Comfort that makes me so.

Southern Legitimacy Statement I am certainly what you would call a southern woman. I grew up in East Tennessee, married then moved to the Western North Carolina mountains then moved even further south to the upstate of South Carolina. Now divorced, I attend a small southern woman’s college while wading hip deep through the world of perm rods, hair spray and tease combs. Hairdressing keeps the mortgage payments current, and my asthma doctor's budget in the black. I live in a world where ya'll is a token word in most conversations, ice tea is strong and harmful to one's pancreas and grits is considered one of the four essential food groups. I also live in a world, that although I've been called a southern gal all my life, I don't always feel like I fit in. Maybe that's from being nerdy, somewhat bookish, and exhibiting no real talent or interest for sports of any kind, fishing, hunting, beauty contesting, baton twirling, clogging, shagging, or the baking or the frying of southern culinary delights. I also couldn't tell you who is in the running for this year's NASCAR driver of the year award if my life depended on it. But where else but here in the south can you get peaches and strawberries picked fresh that morning? Where else does the hint of snow send two thirds of the county scrambling to the grocery for a week of supplies? Where else can one spend the summer partaking in the battle of trying to get something to grow in your backyard besides fire ant colonies? What I am is woman who lives in a place I can't imagine ever leaving. I raised my kids here, my grand kids were born here. My four cats were deposited upon my doorstep here. I'm a southern woman, and quite content with the label. Now can someone pass me a glass of that iced tea? I'm rather parched.

Marianne was a smart young woman, but careless. You know, the kind of careless that makes you forget the zip code when you’re addressing a letter, and then the letter comes back and because it contains a bank deposit, causes...