“I’ve lived in California for 21 years, but I’m from Jackson, Mississippi. It’s like my accent—it’s always going to be with me. It’s part of who I am.
I consider myself a clunky, blunt Southerner, with some of the genteel side that slipped in. My dad was a professor and an ordained minister. He’d go into the Delta and preach in the little churches. It felt like going to forgotten places. Sometimes there were only eight people in the congregation, but Dad carried a list of their names to remember who they were. After church, we’d have an amazing meal at a farmer’s house. Eating in people’s homes and being invited into their lives stayed with me.
Eudora Welty lived just minutes from us in Jackson. I didn’t appreciate her as a kid, but later came to love her. Sometimes I listen to her One Writer’s Beginnings lectures at Harvard while I travel. There’s nuance and humor in Mississippi. Storytelling on porches has layers that people don’t see. Eudora said writing isn’t pointing a finger, it’s parting a curtain. That feels true to me…