After writing twenty southern mysteries and two southern novels, I am still surprised to find myself on a blog for southern authors. You see, I started my career determined not to become one.
At Vassar College I took a class on southern literature. The prof started us out with Sherwood Anderson (from Ohio), progressed to Mark Twain (southern?), and finally got to the only three real southern writers she felt deserved the title: Faulkner, Welty, and O’Connor.
I wonder how other students found the class? As far as I could tell, our professor regarded the South as a place of hollow, stereotypical people drearily yearning for past glories. When I tried to argue that not all of us were poor, regressive, fundamentalist, foul mouthed, illiterate, or deranged, I was accused of not knowing the “real” South. Me, who had lived here all my life and had four generations of family lying in the same North Carolina cemetery!
I left the class vowing that whatever kind of writer I became, I would never be a southern writer. I could not and would not depict the South that kind of reader wanted to hear about.
I still struggle with that. On one hand there is the South we who live here know and love; on the other, there is the South that the rest of the country believes exists. Sometimes they overlap, but they are not the same.
How can we get past their stereotypes without creating stereotypes of our own?
How can we write about what we love without denigrating parts of the country other people love?
How can we depict not “the South” but the contradictions and varied conditions that exist here?
One December my mother-in-law visited me in Mobile. We spent the morning at the home of a welfare mother whom I was helping to get her GED. We lunched at a local bar-be-cue, sitting among men who wore farmer’s caps and drove pickup trucks from need, not for status. That afternoon we took tea with a friend who was staying at the Grand Hotel in Point Clear. As we left that elegant hotel, Frances said, “You certainly get around.”
Yet all of those are the South I know and love. All of those are who I am. I have cousins who are classical musicians and one who was the North Carolina banjo picking champion. How can I convey all of that without pandering to stereotypes other people have about the South?
The best I can figure, I have to write not just what I know, but what I am.
Years ago, before a move to Chicago, my husband purchased a book entitled THE NINE NATIONS OF NORTH AMERICA. It broke down the continent into nine geographic regions as distinguishable as individual nations of Europe, and discussed the mannerisms, values, language, and traditions that set each of them apart. It was a valuable aid to us as we moved among mid-westerners and had to learn a new culture, even a new language. Who knew that some folks called fatback “salt pork”?
Our first Sunday there, two little sisters wanted to know, “What is Barnabas?”
“He’s a boy,” I replied, thinking my toddler's blond curls confused them.
“No!” They propped small fists on skinny hips. “We’re half Norwegian and half Italian. What is Barnabas?”
Stymied by generations of Southern mongrel breeding, I stammered, “He’s half Alabamian and half North Carolinian.” They accepted that as exotic enough.
And so it is.
At Vassar College I took a class on southern literature. The prof started us out with Sherwood Anderson (from Ohio), progressed to Mark Twain (southern?), and finally got to the only three real southern writers she felt deserved the title: Faulkner, Welty, and O’Connor.
I wonder how other students found the class? As far as I could tell, our professor regarded the South as a place of hollow, stereotypical people drearily yearning for past glories. When I tried to argue that not all of us were poor, regressive, fundamentalist, foul mouthed, illiterate, or deranged, I was accused of not knowing the “real” South. Me, who had lived here all my life and had four generations of family lying in the same North Carolina cemetery!
I left the class vowing that whatever kind of writer I became, I would never be a southern writer. I could not and would not depict the South that kind of reader wanted to hear about.
I still struggle with that. On one hand there is the South we who live here know and love; on the other, there is the South that the rest of the country believes exists. Sometimes they overlap, but they are not the same.
How can we get past their stereotypes without creating stereotypes of our own?
How can we write about what we love without denigrating parts of the country other people love?
How can we depict not “the South” but the contradictions and varied conditions that exist here?
One December my mother-in-law visited me in Mobile. We spent the morning at the home of a welfare mother whom I was helping to get her GED. We lunched at a local bar-be-cue, sitting among men who wore farmer’s caps and drove pickup trucks from need, not for status. That afternoon we took tea with a friend who was staying at the Grand Hotel in Point Clear. As we left that elegant hotel, Frances said, “You certainly get around.”
Yet all of those are the South I know and love. All of those are who I am. I have cousins who are classical musicians and one who was the North Carolina banjo picking champion. How can I convey all of that without pandering to stereotypes other people have about the South?
The best I can figure, I have to write not just what I know, but what I am.
Years ago, before a move to Chicago, my husband purchased a book entitled THE NINE NATIONS OF NORTH AMERICA. It broke down the continent into nine geographic regions as distinguishable as individual nations of Europe, and discussed the mannerisms, values, language, and traditions that set each of them apart. It was a valuable aid to us as we moved among mid-westerners and had to learn a new culture, even a new language. Who knew that some folks called fatback “salt pork”?
Our first Sunday there, two little sisters wanted to know, “What is Barnabas?”
“He’s a boy,” I replied, thinking my toddler's blond curls confused them.
“No!” They propped small fists on skinny hips. “We’re half Norwegian and half Italian. What is Barnabas?”
Stymied by generations of Southern mongrel breeding, I stammered, “He’s half Alabamian and half North Carolinian.” They accepted that as exotic enough.
And so it is.
Bio: Patricia Sprinkle is the author of two Family Tree mysteries, nine Thoroughly Southern mysteries, and seven Sheila Travis mysteries. Her new release is SINS OF THE FATHERS, which explores how decisions one generation makes can drastically affect its descendents.
2 comments:
yes, indeed...reminds me of the time my (second generation Italian) mother-in-law asked, "Well , what are you?" I'm...American, I said.
Truly, my people have been here in the Carolinas so long, who knows WHO got off WHAT boat WHEN? So, I guess I'm a "mutt"...but it cracks me up when I go up North and everyone seems to identify you by your heritage-- by your name or your looks... Down here, we're truly a melting pot of collard greens, and all the better for it.
Hi, Patty!
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