By Valerie
Fraser Luesse
At a
literary conference I attended years ago, one of the presenters suggested that
the reason Eudora Welty had such an ear for Deep South dialect was she heard it
as an outsider, given that her father was from Ohio and her mother came from
West Virginia. I’ve experienced the same thing writing for Southern Living magazine. Most of our staff members are from the
South, but we have one editor who’s a New Yorker, and you wouldn’t believe how
many great story ideas she has, simply because the things we do, the way we
talk, the foods we eat—they’re all exotic to her. She finds Southern culture intriguing,
while those of us who grew up here often take it for granted: Of course we consider macaroni and cheese a
vegetable. Doesn’t everybody?
So much
of telling Southern stories is just paying attention . . .
to
that handwritten sign in a little country store: “No baggy britches. We don’t
want to look at your underwear. The Management.”
to
that Louisiana church sign that reads, “God answers knee mail.”
to
Southernisms like “reckon” (think/imagine), “pocket book” (purse), “ear bobs”
(earrings), and “some more” (impressive, as in, “That was some more party”)
to
live oak trees and kudzu, barbecue joints and roadside tomatoes, preachers and
football coaches and “beauticians” and Mama
The
setting for my new novel, Almost Home, is
based on a real place that once belonged to my family in Alabama, and as I
wrote I kept reminding myself: Get the
Southern details right. Sometimes I see better with my eyes closed, so
that’s what I do when I get stuck. I close my eyes and picture myself inside
the story. It helps me smell the red dirt and hear the whap of a screen door or the creaking sound of a hanging basket,
swinging from a hook on the front porch. I can feel a cool breeze under the
shade of a pecan tree or the hot prickle on my skin when I step out into the
sun. I can swat at a mosquito, brush aggravating ants off my bare foot, and
take a cool drink of water from the garden hose.
Authenticity
is always in the details. And in the South, compelling details are everywhere.
Valerie Fraser Luesse is the bestselling author of Missing Isaac and an award-winning
magazine writer best known for her feature stories and essays in Southern
Living, where she is currently the senior travel editor. Specializing in
stories about unique pockets of Southern culture, Luesse has published major
pieces on the Gulf Coast, the Mississippi Delta, Louisiana’s Acadian Prairie,
and the Outer Banks of North Carolina. Her editorial section on Hurricane
Katrina recovery in Mississippi and Louisiana won the 2009 Writer of the Year
award from the Southeast Tourism Society. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama. Facebook.com/valeriefraserluessebooks
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