Category: Fiction

Southern Legitimacy Statement: My family has been farming in the South for fifty years; longer if you count cotton. I don't count cotton.

SLS: Most of my family was born and raised in the Deep South, and remains there (Mississippi, Alabama, and East Texas). Things get a bit confused by some in those areas when they find out that I grew up in the Upper South of Tidewater, Virginia. When they hear my soft accent or that I prefer to be asked first before my tea is sweetened, I am sometimes accused of being a Yankee (not that there's anything wrong with that). Not so with my family, though--I'm still Southern through and through--and proud of it. I'm so Southern that I can go into great detail about my usual scratch staple of grits and its historical importance to the South's survival. True, but I eat them so often (always stone ground--never instant) because they're soooo good. Plus, I know the difference between a chicken house and a hen house, and have met both chicken catchers and chicken sexers.

Southern Legitimacy Statement: It was probably around age seven in the middle of a winter night that I realized how southern I was while dangling my legs in Granny's outhouse.

Southern legitimacy statement my grandmother made fat back sandwiches at lunch for all the grandchildren and our cholesterol is just fine.

I moved to Virginia at age seven and was baptized by vernacular when on my first day at the new school my teacher told me to do something "right quick." The whole world sounded different. Decades later, I can make fried green tomatoes without a recipe, and (not so) secretly enjoy going to the Bass Pro Shop.

Southern Legitimacy Statement: I'm so Southern the only other book I allow on my top booshelf besides the Bible is "Gone With The Wind".

Southern Legitimacy Statement: Mother, Grand-mother, Great Grand-mother, nurse, writer, chief cook and bottle washer, they are all me and they are all Southern. As the years of my self imposed Northern exile roll I by, I have come to know that Southern is who I am, no matter the location.

SLS: Me, I grew up in Charlotte, and shortly after having my dog eaten by the people in the apartment building across the creek, was moved up to Pittsburgh by my family. Milled around for a while, then had a sabbatical from 2010-2011 which resulted in my winning the PEN American Center's Prison Writing contest. Weird how things work out. Funny in a sad way.

Southern Legitimacy Statement: I was born and bred in the Alabama Wiregrass to a father, who said, “Yes, Ma’am” to every female no matter how old or young, and a mother, who painted her lips and nails red and wore heels, hose and a garter everyday of the week except Saturdays, when she rode horses with my father then she wore jodhpurs and boots. Her hair was the hardest thing she had to deal with on a daily basis. If for some reason she couldn’t make it to the beauty shop, she took meals in her bedroom, announcing that her hair looked like a “stump full of granddaddies.” She believed in benign neglect. I ran around barefoot in cutoff dungarees without a shirt. The dungaree suspenders pulled over my shoulders and hooked to metal buttons on a bib, covering my chest. I was sandy, freckled and tick-ridden. Occasionally, daddy would bring in quail and partridge from a Saturday morning shoot. I would pick them clean on Saturday night, while my parents were dining and dancing. We’d have fried quail and grits for dinner at noon on Monday. We ate fried fish roe and grits for breakfast on Sundays and brains and eggs many weekdays. I grew up on scuppernong wine made by my granddaddy. I was a child of the 1950's and life in the Wiregrass was peaceful, pleasant and in some ways peculiar (I just didn’t know it then).

SLS : I have seen a couple episodes of Lizard Lick Towing. No? Well, I traveled across two states to hear a Southern Preacher, because that is as close as he would get to the abyss that is my current residency . God bless you Pastor David Terrell.