Southern Legitimacy Statement:

Earlier this year, some other Americans in Prague said to me, “You’re not really Southern, are you?” Bless their hearts. There’s a Czech dish called “svickova” that features beef with dumplings and cranberry sauce — served with whipped cream on top. My non-Southern roommate found the combination rather, ah, disconcerting; I told her that, coming from a culture where Coke is a staple ingredient in gravy and salads as often gelatin as greenery, I’ve got no room to call anyone else’s cuisine “strange.” Not too long ago, I ensconced myself in a corner of U Medvidku with a half-written poem and a plate of roasted pig tails with garlic sauce. It was a fine afternoon indeed.

Southern Legitimacy Statement:

In my childhood, summer was about no school and lots of fun, in, out and around my home. As I grew older, I realized that summer started to fade into ball practice, band camp and summer jobs and finally into a full-time job without the summer vacation or on wonderful years, a full week of North Myrtle Beach. In recent years, summer rolls into lost jobs, lay-offs, late bills and missed beach trips as the two young boys in my home start their trek into the older summers much earlier than I did. The many discussions of when we are going to the beach and where are we staying chill my mind as the thoughts of which bill to pay and how to fix the heat pump loom larger on the horizon. Still, the dreams of those wonderful beach trips spark me to get up on those days off and work overtime to gas up the van and head down Highway 601 to save those summers for my two sons.

Southern Legitimacy Statement:

I was born and raised in the hills of western North Carolina where my grandparents played a big part in my upbringing. That’s OK by me, because I’ve enjoyed a whole ‘nother generation of tales, stories, and life experiences that I would have missed out on had things not worked out the way they did. I have fond memories of my grandparents…helping my grandmother picked berries for jam: wild strawberries, blackberries, and dewberries. Grandma knew where every berry patch in the country was located. I helped my grandpa shape and attach new sled runners to his horse-drawn sled. The runners were made from sourwood trees grown on his farm. The southern way of life, as I knew it growing up, was not always easy, but it was the best time of my life.

Southern Legitimacy Statement:

In my poem “Connellsville,” which is about my hometown in dreary Western Pennsylvania, I close by saying:

the only North I want to be in
is here in North Carolina
where I have at last

found love and warmth

That about sums it up. While I’ve lived further south — can’t get any farther south than Key West — I will not live any farther north than here. This is my home for nigh on to 15 years now and I I have seen my dream of retiring to Key West mutate into one of getting a beach house at Topsail Island here in North Carolina. Just as I quickly learned to despise tourists in Key West, I almost immediately learned to hate transplanted Yankees complaining about the hot weather. GO BACK NORTH! IT’S THE SOUTH AND IT SWELTERS IN THE SUMMER!

I met my wife here, bought my first home here and have built a full and happy life in Raleigh. I probably should switch over from my brandy nightcaps to some good ol’ Southern sippin’ whiskey like Jack Daniels or George Dickel. Maybe that will be my next project. Sounds like a pleasant one.

Am I a legitimate Southerner? You betcha … I love the South and I’m too legit to quit!

Southern Legitimacy Statement:

I believe tea should be served iced, with lemon and sugar, but also that it’s about time women get served first at dinner. I believe honeysuckle mingled with freshly cut hay is the scent of summertime, but am allergic to hay. I believe the only sausage worth eating is purchased from the Amish and ground to our family’s secret specifications of sage and black paper, but I’ve been a vegetarian for ten years. I believe a family’s livelihood can depend on one crop of tobacco, but also support anti-smoking legislation. I believe the closeness to god you feel at Notre Dame is no closer than what you feel at the Galen Road First Baptist Church’s tent revival, but am agnostic. I believe snakes and spiders are on our side, but I kill one that gets too close to me anyway. I believe every child should go barefooted in a field of mud, but also that a woman’s purse should match her shoes. I believe I’m a southerner.

Southern Legitimacy Statement:

I was born and bred in the State of Alabama, the Heart of Dixie, but I have worked abroad for most of my professional career. I have lived, worked and traveled in 33 countries. Through it all, I have never lost my love for the Deep South, its customs and its traditions…for quality of life and the warmth of its people, nothing else comes close.

Southern Legitimacy Statement:

I’m John Calvin Hughes. I was born in the old, red-brick Baptist Hospital in Jackson, Mississippi (not that new building that looks like a parking garage). Twenty years ago I moved to Florida. Would you believe a person could move farther south and find himself surrounded by Yankees? Even married to one? Yes’m. One certainly could.

Southern Legitimacy Statement:

I am a Louisiana native. My ancestors were Acadian, French, German, Irish and Spanish. My grandparents and great grandparents primarily spoke Cajun French all of their lives. Both of my parents spoke Cajun French. I speak it a little and understand a little more than a little. There was a time not too long ago when Cajun children were punished for speaking French at school and this caused many to lose their native tongue and get their hides tanned. Now in Cajun Country, known as Acadiana, there are French Immersion classes for students in the hope that we can reclaim this part of our heritage and keep the language alive.

My mother is a storyteller and I am a poet. My mother often recounts her personal history and our family history in ways which reflect her love and appreciation of her Cajun heritage and many of the traditions within it. She will begin the story in English and end it in French, or toss in uniquely Cajun phrases throughout. I often encourage my mother to write her stories but she refuses. But she will tell them to us—she loves an audience. Even when she is in an audience she tries to tell stories—true story.

Although I do not write poetry that is specifically “Cajun” I do consider myself a Cajun and a “Cajun poet and artist” in perhaps a neo-traditional manifestation. I love my unique heritage—the encompassing love we Cajuns have for life, creating fun and food, “passing a good time” at cultural festivals, embracing friends old and new and each other.

Southern Legitimacy Statement:

Born in North Carolina, I live in Nashville, Tennessee.
I am a poet/blogger/Spoken Word Artist/songwriter/jazz singer.

Southern Legitimacy Statement:

Born in West Virginia - raised in Pocahontas, VA, a small coal mining town in Southwest Virginia. As with most kids in the holler, we were raised by just about every family around those parts. They all had a hand in it at one time or another. My Dad was a coal miner as was his Dad and brother and uncles, etc. Most kids thereabouts had Daddy’s who mined coal. Our fortunes would rise and fall with the strikes and the union’s eventual agreements to go ahead and work awhile - at least until the next contract came up for voting. In the meantime, we went to school, to town for groceries, played up and down the hollers and hills - busy with growing up and acting out and all the rest that childhood demands. We were surrounded by silent stories that whispered to us of Indian raids and family feuds and ghosts returning for their loved ones. We walked the roads looking for bottles to sell at the local store returning home with pockets of candy and bottles of pop. We had no appreciation of our histories - our little valley’s history - we were simple country holler kids who were more concerned with getting out of school and finding a really neat place to play. We clashed up against our Southern roots only when faced by a rebel flag in a window or on a shirt - we believed the South would rise again even though we had no idea it ever fell. We had no idea we were a part of something we would later yearn for and be proud of - and be forced to feel ashamed of until reconsidering it all and deciding that hell, I am Southern and it’s solely by the grace of God - Amen.

Southern Legitimacy Statement:

A mule was an integral part of the tobacco farm that I lived on for many years. What time a mule wasn’t plowing a field, one of us youngins would hop on his back and play like we was John Wayne, Gene Autry, or Roy Rogers. It’s odd, but we never played Festus Haggen who actually rode a mule…

You could say that a mule was a member of the family, though he never quite made it to the supper table, at least I don’t think he made it to the supper table. We were told to be thankful for the food and to never question the origins of the meat.

I have a picture of my daddy (circa 1922) standing beside a mule. Daddy was always fond of saying that he was the one in the dress. That’s the way they dressed little boys back then; of course, his folks were poor tobacco farmers, too…struggling to make ends meet, having to make-do with whatever clothing they had on hand. Daddy said wearing that dress sure beat running around naked. The mule’s name was Jack. Of course, they were all called Jack. If one died, he was replaced by another mule called Jack. I reckon my family went through six or seven Jack mules before daddy bought his first John Deere.

Southern Legitimacy Statement:

I believe in the tarpaper shack, the tin roof, the dog under the porch, his howl all over the yard. I believe in Miss Flannery and Miss Eudora and Wild Bill, rats in the corn shed, peafowl yelling help, help at passing cars. I believe my hometown of Griffin is just close enough to the asylum in Milledgeville to whiff the crazy fumes. Shotgun with its cracked stock fixed with plastic wood, deer hooves opening up the first melons, a bottle tree with blue bottles (they have to be blue). I believe it is a mistake to try to teach the pigs to sing: it wastes your time and irritates the pigs. I believe the world is going to hell in a ham biscuit. Could be worse. Need some rain.