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.