Southern Legitimacy Statement:
I am a native Floridian, born in Hialeah, lightly seasoned in Belle Glade and served up in West Palm Beach. That makes me from the South and I'm proud to be a Cuban Cracker.
Carmen Kunze “My Skunk Ape Christmas”
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Bobbi A. Chukran “Sadie and the Museum Lady”
Southern Legitimacy Statement:
I was born in Texas and influenced by eccentric kinfolks who were farmers, artists, graveyard caretakers and sharecroppers. I was raised on fried catfish (caught on trot-lines using blood-bait), fried chicken, collards and turnip greens. I used to help my grandmother gather poke sallet down in the bottoms. At the age of 42, I realized that I was more Southern than Texan. Since then, I haven't forgotten that.
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Deb Jellett “Dancing Pine Trees”
Southern Legitimacy Statement
I was born and raised in the South, occasionally eat grits, but hate football. Oh dear.
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Ed Laird “Crazy”
Southern Legitimacy Statement
For southern highlanders and we who are their descendants, words are revered, but reserved and used with economy. But when the few words we use fail us, music enlarges our emotional vocabularies, and our simple ballads of love and heartbreak speak volumes.
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Shelia Lamb “Lodestone”
Southern Legitimacy Statement
I grew up in Manassas, Virginia, near the battlefield. (Just 'the battlefield'). I graduated from Stonewall Jackson High School. A one-armed, long-bearded Confederate in uniform was our mascot who shot cannon blanks when touchdowns were scored at football games. It wasn't until my junior year that I understood the South had lost the war. Also, I like okra.
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Anthony Marshall : What Remained
SLS: I live in the REAL south, South Carolina, and, while that statement alone should legitimize my southerosity, please indulge me. I own a wardrobe sprinkled with camouflage shirts, pants, hats even though i do not hunt. When I was young, my parents told me total bullshit stories of how my grandmother, sometimes great grandmother depending on how much PBR she had drunk, (Always a female ancestor), was a Cherokee. As I grew older and realized how many of my fellow southerners had this ridiculous mythological Cherokee ancestor I quickly ditched the story. As I type this, I am wiping the slime off of my boiled peanuts on my camouflage pants and airbrushed wolf-howling-at-the-moon-while-sitting-next-to-an-indian t-shirt that I bought from the flea market.
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William Wurm : Junior Hoarder
SLS...I have only become more Southern since I last submitted anything. The story series is inspired by West Alabama (going there soon to prepare for deer season) and is written in Ocean Springs, MS.
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April Winters : Mommy’s In a Better Place
Southern Legitimacy Statement
Grammy used to make the best rhubarb pie. Her meals were the type where every inch of the long table was covered with food: fried chicken, mashed potatoes, corn-on-the-cob, and vegetables from her garden, all topped off with rhubarb pie. Yum! She expressed her love for her family by making sure we all had full – I’m talking really full – tummies. She had a quick wit and what she called a “hillbilly” accent. She may not have been book smart, but she sure was love smart.
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Tim Bullard : The Little Red Man
Tim is the oldest of Mule Friends. He is one of my very first true online friends. His talent as a writer speaks for itself. His southern legitimacy transcends a statement. Welcome back to the Mule, Tim.
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The Vehicle My Father Slept In by Jason Sobelman
SLS : I have seen a couple episodes of Lizard Lick Towing. No?
Well, I traveled across two states to hear a Southern Preacher, because that is as close as he would get to the abyss that is my current residency . God bless you Pastor David Terrell.
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The Familiar by Sylvia Dodgen
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I was born and bred in the Alabama Wiregrass to a father, who said, “Yes, Ma’am” to every female no matter how old or young, and a mother, who painted her lips and nails red and wore heels, hose and a garter everyday of the week except Saturdays, when she rode horses with my father then she wore jodhpurs and boots. Her hair was the hardest thing she had to deal with on a daily basis. If for some reason she couldn’t make it to the beauty shop, she took meals in her bedroom, announcing that her hair looked like a “stump full of granddaddies.” She believed in benign neglect. I ran around barefoot in cutoff dungarees without a shirt. The dungaree suspenders pulled over my shoulders and hooked to metal buttons on a bib, covering my chest. I was sandy, freckled and tick-ridden.
Occasionally, daddy would bring in quail and partridge from a Saturday morning shoot. I would pick them clean on Saturday night, while my parents were dining and dancing. We’d have fried quail and grits for dinner at noon on Monday. We ate fried fish roe and grits for breakfast on Sundays and brains and eggs many weekdays. I grew up on scuppernong wine made by my granddaddy. I was a child of the 1950's and life in the Wiregrass was peaceful, pleasant and in some ways peculiar (I just didn’t know it then).
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No Questions No Lies by Eric Boyd
SLS: Me, I grew up in Charlotte, and shortly after having my dog eaten by the people in the apartment building across the creek, was moved up to Pittsburgh by my family. Milled around for a while, then had a sabbatical from 2010-2011 which resulted in my winning the PEN American Center's Prison Writing contest. Weird how things work out. Funny in a sad way.
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Seeker by Cecile Dixon
Southern Legitimacy Statement: Mother, Grand-mother, Great Grand-mother, nurse, writer, chief cook and bottle washer, they are all me and they are all Southern. As the years of my self imposed Northern exile roll I by, I have come to know that Southern is who I am, no matter the location.
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Vera Tuck: Memoir and Requiem by Randall Ivey
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I'm so Southern the only other book I allow on my top booshelf besides the Bible is "Gone With The Wind".
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Rachel Kapitan — the notion …
I moved to Virginia at age seven and was baptized by vernacular when on my first day at the new school my teacher told me to do something "right quick." The whole world sounded different. Decades later, I can make fried green tomatoes without a recipe, and (not so) secretly enjoy going to the Bass Pro Shop.
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Robert Klein Engler — The Tourist
Southern Legitimacy Statement:
I have passed a lot of time living in New Orleans and traveling from there to Des Plaines, Illinois and back to NOLA. I take comfort in living by a river. I know what “lagniappe” means, and I plan on being buried above ground.
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Frances Badgett – Wishbone Stick
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I grew up in Lexington, Virginia steeped in summer afternoon storytelling that winds its way late into the night. I walk 74 percent slower than most people I know here in Washington State. I'm pretty sure I'm the only person who orders grits at the diner here in town. I have that way we have that makes us really tiresome at the grocery store in places like Seattle and New York. I'm descended from Felix Grundy. I'll let you Google him.
*ValNote: I google'd him.
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Hannah Thurman – Snakes in the Ceiling
Southern Legitimacy Statement: When she was 8, Hannah attended a weeklong Kay Yow Lady Wolfpack basketball camp at NC State University, where dribbling was optional but prayer mandatory.
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Kevin Winter – What The Storm Did
Southern Legitimacy Statement: A snapshot of the South. A line of watermelons laid out in the grass. The road, just glorified gravel. My wife pointing through the windshield at the hand-painted cardboard leaning against the fence post. A smile playing across her face in the shifting sunshine. An empty gumdrop jar gleaming beside the cardboard sign. "Take a melon" on one line, "Leave a dollar" on the next.
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Diane Hoover Bechtler – Illiteracy
Southern legitimacy statement
my grandmother made fat back sandwiches at lunch for all the grandchildren and our cholesterol is just fine.
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