{"id":2142,"date":"2008-10-27T02:30:47","date_gmt":"2008-10-27T07:30:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/theogeo.com\/blog\/?p=2142"},"modified":"2008-10-27T09:04:22","modified_gmt":"2008-10-27T14:04:22","slug":"speaking-southern-like-it-should-be-spoke","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/theogeo.com\/blog\/drunkblogging\/speaking-southern-like-it-should-be-spoke\/","title":{"rendered":"Speaking Southern like it should be spoke"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"pear<\/a><\/p>\n

When I was growing up, there was this book floating around our house called Speaking Southern Like It Should Be Spoke<\/i><\/a>, and it was more or less a dictionary of Southernisms. What I can’t say for sure is whether or not it was mean or nice. Like, was it playful self-parody, or mean razzing from the outside? I’m not sure, and it’s even harder to tell since I can’t really find much out about that book online, almost like it only exists in my memory. And on this one random site. I’ll need to rifle through some drawers in my parents’ spare bedroom the next time I’m home to see if I can find it. <\/p>\n

Anyway, what got me to thinking about Southernness was tonight’s potluck at the Yarbro-Dill estate, which was Southern-themed and so ridiculously delicious that it defies description. Maybe that’s just my own proclivities busting through the crust there; we’ve done an Indian food night and an Italian night (which I missed due to a case of the barfies) but I tell you, that Southern home cookin’ just practically begs to be lumped into a giant pile in the middle of your Dixie plate and shoveled into your mouth with reckless abandon. The color palate of all the food (save the pomegranate-cranberry deliciousness) was yellow in color and therefore simply had to be mashed together with a hunk of cornbread and shoved down the ol’ gullethole.\u00a0I defy you to find a better way to feed yourself. <\/p>\n

This idea of Southernness is something I find fascinating because I am one of these people who loves and appreciates where I came from and the undeniable Southernness of it, while still rejecting the idea that Southern equals ignorant and racist and hyperreligious. I did my fair share of rebelling against that idea in high school and college by purposefully altering my accent to squeeze out the majority of the drawl \u2014 saying “ahn” instead of “ohwn” was the biggest challenge of my life \u2014 but now I’m glad I’ve still got quite a fair amount of South in my speech. I never managed to get rid of it all and I can’t tell you how grateful I am because of that. I go home and people accuse me of being a Yankee (walking around downtown Saltillo on River Day with a camera I was told I seemed like a tourist); everywhere else I’m just a country bumpkin. So I can enjoy the awkwardness in both places, and take comfort in the knowledge that I have a home, but I’m not necessarily trapped by my roots.<\/p>\n

As I left the potluck, I listened to this voicemail from my mom and grinned like a moron re: its country sweetness: <\/p>\n

<\/object>
Southernistic<\/a> from Lindsey Turner<\/a> on Vimeo<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Part of being Southern is being told that you’re a joke. That you’re inferior. Southerners tend to shoulder an inferiority complex that most people don’t quite understand. I love knowing so many Southerners who are, in fact, fucking awesome, and who understand that the whole Southern underdog thing is just part of the story, not the whole story, and who blow right past that narrative and supply other much more interesting ones instead. <\/p>\n

I’ll tell you what else I like: Going to a potluck where everyone else cooks amazing dishes, and feeling the need to contribute, and having the option to offer up pear preserves prepared from a harvest taken from a tree on your family’s land that’s been producing for four generations. And then having actual people enjoy<\/i> that contribution. I don’t know. It makes the world feel a lot more manageable that way.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When I was growing up, there was this book floating around our house called Speaking Southern Like It Should Be Spoke, and it was more or less a dictionary of Southernisms. What I can’t say for sure is whether or not it was mean or nice. Like, was it playful self-parody, or mean razzing from the outside? I’m not sure, and it’s even harder to tell since I can’t really find much out about that… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[9,363,32],"tags":[606,603,2245,2153,605,604,2236],"class_list":["post-2142","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-drunkblogging","category-fran-moments","category-friends","tag-accent","tag-country","tag-language","tag-memphis","tag-potluck","tag-southern","tag-tennessee"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1jWWl-yy","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theogeo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2142","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theogeo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theogeo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theogeo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theogeo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2142"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/theogeo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2142\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theogeo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2142"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theogeo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2142"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theogeo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2142"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}