The Acceptance Speech by Hope Denney
SLS:
I grew up cutting out biscuits on my grandmother’s formica countertop while wearing an apron that belonged to her mother. I am on a first name basis with my relatives that have been dead for over a century and can tell you about every feud that has happened in my home county for the last fifty years.
The Intruder by Brenda Rose
Southern Legitimacy Statement
I grew up barefoot and poor in southern Georgia. During the summer months, I worked in the tobacco fields. Mama and Daddy were my parents. I speak and write in the language of the South.
No More Blues by Ferdinand Hunter
My Southern Legitimacy Statement is both brief and simple; I was born and raised in Georgia, and I always referred to my 5 ft tall paternal grandmother as Big Mama,
Herself Alone by John Riley
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.
The Pontiac and the Dodge by susan robbins
southern legitimacy statement: I am legitimately Southern, though I have moved across the road from the 1820 farm house where I grew up in rural Virginia. That house had seventeen rooms, seven of which were falling away, so we let them. A big snapping turtle lived under the sagging porch. Down the road from us was a house Thomas Jefferson had designed for his poor cousins who moved out of our house when that miniature Monticello was ready.
Ruby by NL Snowden
Yea! A mule story! Southern Legitimacy Statement I was bred, born and raised in Demopolis, Alabama. I’ve always lived in the South, and I’m about as stereotypical as anyone can be. My sister has two of the columns that were in the Georgia Confederate Hospital in her house. Our great, great granddaddy Snowden recuperated in that hospital. I grew up with a black maid who I thought was mama, and the white lady in the house I wondered why she spent the night with us every night. As I’ve aged I discovered that eating cheese grits every morning for breakfast will make you fat—twenty-five pounds fatter to be exact. I once owned a Jersey milk cow and made my own butter, sour cream, buttermilk, cream cheese and drank a gallon of fresh milk with one third of it sweet cream floating on the surface. Anastasia raised me three calves in all and we milked her daily until she dried up for her next calf. The years I owned the cow, I was er, plump to say the least. I really do have a daughter who Pony Clubbed a mule. And I eat turnip greens from Cracker Barrel every day of my life.
Crab Promise by Kerri Dieffenwierth
southern legitimacy statement: I’m a native Floridian who likes to honk at cows and eat collard greens with vinegar. I’ve seen a swaybacked horse suck watermelon and I’ve seen a nasty canal gator eat the family pet. I don’t mind summer, as long as there’s ice in my sweet tea and a box fan near my bed. I eat grits for breakfast with real butter. I live near the Gulf of Mexico and never tire of the smell of a salty breeze. I do not fear Hurricanes like I should, although I do fear skin cancer.
Down Hacksaw by Lacey Jean Frye
SLS: Okay, so this story takes place on the outskirts of Missouri, BUT my large extended family all eat at Nana’s house at Thanksgiving. No matter what! And no one gets to bring COOKIES & GOOP because Aunt Shelly always makes it. And new in-laws never know what sidedish to bring becuase us mother-women have all of them accounted for, some already appear in multiple forms. And Nana’s sister, your Great Aunt Bev always ALWAYS brings a watergate salad to.die.for.
White Trash by Gary Powell
SLS-I come from Ozark hillbillies in Arkansas and Missouri. They could sing a tune, shoot a squirrel, pick cotton, and tell a good one. I grew up in the north, but live in North Carolina. I favor collards over spinach and know how to cook fat back. I reckon that makes me southern enough.
River Sin by Shelle Stormoe
SLS: I was born in Arkansas, and I'll probably die there too. These days, I teach at an Arkansas university, in a small town on the edge of the Ozarks. Some day, I'll move for good to Newton County, still as deep as the backwoods get, and revert to a life governed by seasons instead of clocks.
Peaches by Wanda Stephens
My Southernhoodness may be snatched, and I apologize to the collards aficionados, but I did not like collards during my childhood. Maybe I was adopted, born up in Yankeedom perhaps in…Saginaw, Michigan. Saginaw popped into my head because of Lefty Frizzel’s song.
When I became twenty-one, I decided I should try collards again and began scarfing them down by the bowlful. A favorite hangout became Bubba’s Barbeque Buffet where I found all the collards and fatback I could eat. Now, I can say, honestly, I love collards. Though I got off to a slow start, I put “Dixie” in the CD player and take up a fork.
Ode to Parents in “The” Fall by Theresa Lacey
Southern Legitimacy Statement
Both my parents hail from the South. When they married, my mother's family called it a "mixed" marriage because she was from Alabama, and he was a Texan. Almost a different country, as far as they were concerned. I was born in the middle of a blizzard in Fairbanks, Alaska, the daughter of a father who was in the Army Air Corps. Alaska was then just a territory, but by virtue of my parents being southerners, and military people, I was born a Southerner. A misplaced Southerner, but a bona fide one. When my grandfather died on his farm in Alabama, we moved to the farm to help grandmother, who wanted to keep to her farming ways. It was there I learned how to make grits, how to hitch up a mule, how to pick cotton and dig potatoes. I was never very good at milking the cows, so my morning chore was gathering the eggs--and I was afraid of the pecking hens, but too afraid of my father's wrath, NOT to do this. We had an outhouse until my father built a real, in-house bathroom, and my momma got to have the first flushing rights. I learned from an uncle how to find the stars, from an aunt how to make perfect sweet tea, from my grandmother how to "put up" canned fruits and vegetables, and from my momma how to use plants and trees for medicine. My great-uncle offered to teach us kids how to make homemade wine, but this never happened. And from my father and brother, I learned how to play chess, hunt and fish. I guess that all makes me Southern, and I feel real pity for people who don't understand anything I've written here.
Morning by Thomas McGauley
Southern Legitimacy Statement: Raised by mudfish on the St. Johns River near Welaka, Florida.
Savannah Ghost Tour by David Massengill
SLS: It's about the South--and it's based on my trip to the South.
The Patriarch by Carla Cummins
SOUTHERN LEGITIMACY STATEMENT:
My family arrived in the Isle of Wight, Virginia, in the early 1600s and decided they were here to stay. Fortunes being what they were, it wasn't long after before they headed down to Carolina and set up camp on the Black River, where they've pretty much been ever since.
I grew up drinking tea from mason jars and sitting on porches, catching lightning bugs and dropping my r's. I can recite all the books of the Bible and sing all the verses to "When the Roll is Called Up Yonder." My first kiss was to a boy with a pickup truck and Cherokee blood in his veins, who smelled of Drakkar Noir and tobacco.
I keep bacon grease in a coffee can under my kitchen sink, fry my cornbread, and ensure my luck by eating black-eyed peas and greens on New Year's Day.
I may now live in Australia, but the South is the home I always carry with me.
Poetry
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