I wonder if it means anything to be Southern anymore. I would definitely say that my grandmother is Southern. My parents are Southern, but to a lesser degree. I can't really say whether I am Southern at all. I grew up here. All my family lives here. We've been in Alabama for close to 200 years, and before that, South Carolina and Virginia.
I grew up here, but I can't say the South had a very formative influence on me. I wish it did. I was more influenced by the secular/modern Western culture that the traditional South loathed so much. I would say that I'm a South-haunted Southerner. The South is this immense but distant thing that lurks in the shadows of my life, with a vague sense of it running through my blood, yet ever just beyond my reach. The South is something I want to understand and redeem and keep alive. But can I pass on something that was not passed on to me? Is this how the South will die?
But after it dies, the South's gonna rise again, right?! (Permit me a Yankee jest)
ReplyDeleteI am fascinated by the South. But, I'm afraid I will never be able to grasp it in its entirety.