Singing Songs About the Southland

Do you call yourself a Southerner? I don't. Even though I've lived outside New England for more years than I lived there, I still feel like a Yankee. The small towns and snowy winters of the North formed my personality: I'm reserved, skeptical, slightly intellectually snobby--and that's not even mentioning my faults!

But I love living in the South. People are friendly; the weather is so much better; the pace of life is slower; status-seeking isn't as prevalent; churches are everywhere. Even some of the rough edges that surprised me when I first moved here (Confederate flags flying from the backs of pickup trucks? Hello, Forsyth County!) have worn down in the last decade. Years ago, people I met would try to engage me in debating the Civil War. That never happens anymore.

Read this article to learn why, in spite of our regional treasures, Honey Boo Boo and the Duck Dynasty folk, people are still flocking to the South and will continue for the foreseeable future. People love to mock the South, but they love to move here even more.

Write about your identity as a Southerner (or not!). What do you like and dislike about the South? Do you envision living here your whole life? We know what Southern stereotypes are; what stereotypes do you have about people who live in other parts of the country?

Finally, consider these quotes from some of our greatest Southern authors.

Flannery O'Connor:
I have found that anything that comes out of the South is going to be called grotesque by the Northern reader, unless it is grotesque, in which case it is going to be called realistic.

I think it is safe to say that while the South is hardly Christ-centered, it is most certainly Christ-haunted.

The great advantage of being a Southern writer is that we don't have to go anywhere to look for manners; bad or good, we've got them in abundance. We in the South live in a society that is rich in contradiction, rich in irony, rich in contrast, and particularly rich in its speech.

William Faulkner: 
The past is never dead. It's not even past.

Walker Percy: 
Like many young men in the South, he had trouble ruling out the possible. They are not like an immigrant's son in Passaic who desires to become a dentist and that is that. Southerners have trouble ruling out the possible. What happens to a... man to whom all things seem possible and every course of action open? Nothing of course.

Hank Williams, Jr.: 
“We say grace, and we say ‘ma’am,’
 If you ain’t into that, we don’t give a da[rn].”