Category: Essays

Southern Legitimacy Statement: You can’t go much further south than living in Miami Beach. Although most would disqualify my city as The South, I promise I can fish, cook collard greens, and sing all the lyrics to Southern rap songs...

Southern Legitimacy Statement: Though I live in Massachusetts now, I was born and raised in Houston, and part of my heart will always be in Texas. I know some folks don’t call Texas the South, but I always have, seeing...

Southern Legitimacy Statement: Honestly, I don’t really have a Southern Legitimacy Statement except to say my grandfather was born in Texas. He was orphaned at 3 (father was knifed in a barroom on stilts, mother died shortly after from a...

Southern Legitimacy Statement: This work focuses on my relationship with my father and meat, and it takes place in the polarized city: Houston, Texas. Houston is my birth place as well as my homeland. I remained in the South for...

Southern Legitimacy Statement: Although I was born at home in the hills of Kentucky like a true hillbilly, I did not belong. My parents were back-to-the-land hippies from New York and Massachusetts – art students looking to make the world...

Southern Legitimacy Statement:  Drive east from Southern California and you’ll eventually run out of road. That’s when I knew I was in “the South,” where I could disappear, and the real me could burst forth! Wallpapering bathrooms for a housing...

I am a professional dirt bag and failed Independent Fundamentalist Baptist who grew up in the oil fields of west Texas. I am also poet, writer, educator, translator, and activist. My work has been published in English and Spanish and...

Southern Legitimacy Statement: Get used to the fact that when you move to South Carolina you will hear these every day: “Yes Sir, Yes Ma’am,” and “what church do you go to?” When you walk into a restaurant or fast...

Southern Legitimacy Statement: My momma and papa, both teachers, brought me into this world in a small town in the ancient land of Bessarabia, and they always wanted me to be a…teacher! So, I became one, which got me in...

Southern legitimacy statement T. Jeremy Smith grew up on a dairy and tobacco farm in South Central Kentucky. After spending much of his childhood running from his older brother, Jeremy spent 20 years as an adult running from the degenerative...

Southern Legitimacy Statement: I’m a southern girl who was born and raised in Texas. I worked in the oil patch as a landman wearing stylish skirts and cute shoes, enduring my gendered job title with a demure smile and feminine...

My Southern Legitimacy Statement follows: I was born and raised in the mountains of Southeastern Kentucky. I am a product of the soup bean lovin’, Bible thumpin’, hardworking people who labor in tobacco fields praying for a good breeze to...

My Southern Legitimacy Statement: Called to the Blue Ridge Mountains via the music of the Allman Brothers Band first and then later by both the Fleet Foxes and the Band of Horses, I finally got the message ten years ago...

Southern Legitimacy Statement: Born in Salisbury, NC, I moved quite a bit as a child. We lived in several places throughout my home state before relocating to Jacksonville, FL while I was in the fifth grade. After thirty years I...

Southern Legitimacy Statement: I was born in Knoxville, TN. and lived in Tennessee and Virginia while growing up. However, we moved North to Chicago a few years later. Dirt Clods Dirt clods were rock and clay projectiles molded together and...