This terrific reflection comes to us from Ginger M:
I’ve never had a problem producing evidence that I am a Southerner. I was born and raised in southeast Tennessee around the corner from the site of a Civil War battle. As a little girl, my elderly babysitter told me “not to sass” her and Moonpies were served during snack time at Vacation Bible School. In second grade, I dressed up as Scarlett O’Hara for Halloween, hat and parasol included. In high school, if it wasn’t football season, you could usually find me on Friday nights at a place called the Mountain Opry listening to bluegrass music (this had more to do with a boy than love of bluegrass music, but still). The hot line in my high school cafeteria served fried okra, cornbread and macaroni and cheese every single day, and my favorite food then and now is pimento cheese. I went to college in Nashville and met a guy from Alabama, and we are now raising our kids down the street from the house that he grew up in. My father-in-law has enough guns to arm a small militia. If you were to follow me around for a day, you might hear me say things such as, “Fixin’ to”, “Like Sherman through Georgia” and “If it ain’t ticks, it’s fleas”. Not to mention, I have a dog and a daughter named for characters in To Kill a Mockingbird.
Like many a self-respecting Southern woman, I have loved the magazine Garden and Gun since the first issue hit stands several years ago, so it was only natural that when the editors put out a book I would pick up a copy. The Southerner’s Handbook is filled with topical essays about Southern life and culture penned by the magazine’s editors and contributors. It’s a beautiful product and remarkably exhaustive–uncomfortably so!
As I sat on a plane reading the book this past weekend, I found myself placing imaginary checkmarks next to the subjects I felt like I had mastered or about which I felt intimately familiar. For each subject or chapter I checked, there were many more I did not. For instance, I’ve never liked sweet tea, I’ve never fried a chicken or made homemade biscuits and I’ve never set foot in New Orleans for Mardi Gras or Louisville for the Derby. I am a rambling and awkward storyteller and despite the fact that my own father grew up in small town Mississippi and has been a high school English teacher for forty years, I have not read a single word of Faulkner. My husband would sooner chew glass than wear white bucks or train a bird dog.
No doubt the talented people behind Garden and Gun had not set out to publish an elaborate scorecard. But I had turned it into one anyway. Sad to say, when my own Southern-ness is measured against the 200 proof Southern-ness in The Southerner’s Handbook, I am found lacking. My identity as a Southerner is demolished, buried beneath the mountain of evidence that I am not Southern enough, and there are not enough “y’alls” or years in Alabama to restore it. The death of one’s Southern identity may seem trivial. But each of us have an identity we fear losing, and for each of us there is a proverbial handbook that can lay us low by revealing us for the frauds that we are. But in each shattered identity is a shard of eventual joy, as by His grace, we are drawn toward the one identity in which we can find rest…. ‘Bless our hearts.
COMMENTS
23 responses to “Gardens, Guns, and the Law of Southern Identity”
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This Alabama native/Sewanee grad/South Carolina resident (who doesn’t like sweet tea, either) is standing and clapping! Beautiful post, Ginger. And by the way, your story telling is neither awkward nor rambling, so you can check THAT off the list!
What a thoughtful post! The details were like walking through a Southern wonderland. The only one you forgot is that you share a name with a common dog name! 🙂 Proud of you.
Good show, Ginger. Let’s hear more female voices in the Mockingbird world!
indeed
This tennessee born girl who married an Alabama boys loves, loves, lives this post!
Ma’am, as far as I can tell, lists are good for the grocery store– and that’s about it. Great post on many levels– thank you from a fellow Southerner, mmmm, maybe make that fellow sojourner from the South. Quick story– I have a friend whose father was known as “Cap’n Johson” and in his job for the county he had to travel off the beaten paths through the most rural areas. One time he became lost and approached a shack where an elderly man was sitting on the front porch in a rocking chair. Cap’n Johnson identified himself and said he was lost and in need of directions. The man rocked a bit in his chair, smiled and replied: “Cap’n Johson, y’use ain’t lost, y’use right’cheer.”
So wonderful, G! Are you sure you weren’t an English major?
ps. I will work on the Kentucky Derby thing…
I am not a Garden and Gun Southerner either, since all of “my people” were subsistence farmers from the mountains of east Tennessee. They did not sit in $3,500 rocking chairs and buy $10,000 Italian shotguns. I feel a lot more kinship with the few remaining (and usually french-communist-voting) mountain folk of Haute-Savoie than I do with the Southern “identity” sold by the folks at G&G, bless their hearts.
Brava, Ginger
What a beautiful reminder of who truly names us. Thanks for speaking truth in a day and age where all too often we subscribe to the narrative the world is writing rather than clinging to what He has promised. Well said, Ginger.
Thanks so much for this fantastic piece, Ginger. It couldn’t be more relevant to me. I work five blocks from the G&G hq and spend much of my life bouncing b/w the poles you describe so eloquently. Then I walk back into my office (at Grace Church) and the weight of your main paint brings peace to my soul once again. Please keep sharing your writing with us!
*point* not “paint”
I find Garden and Gun to be the Portlandia of the South. In trying so hard, it becomes a spoof. Ginger this was refreshingly honest or, as some would say, “you called a spade a spade.” And Jason Isbell rocks so kudos to whomever tagged my song. RTR! (You think G&G knows what that means?)
Funny enough, I have taken notice of this very book in stocking and recovering the shelves of the local Barnes and Noble I work for, currently, and, to be honest, I laughed it off as being some weird example of glorified Southern pride and identity that I have never wanted to be part of–never was interested in gardens or guns! But your experience with it is interesting and I love your take on how it becomes the very thing that dismembers your identity. I think my pre-judgment of it works in a similar fashion. In an effort to divest myself of my “southern-ness” (including all aspects whether good or bad), I create my own identity which becomes a law unto myself as well. A Catch 22 to be sure. Really appreciate this post and next time I run across this book I may just pick it up and give it a gander and appreciate it for what it is, not what I “think” it is.
Ginger, this is one of the best MB posts I’ve read in a long time! I love G&G as much as any Southerner, but have to agree that, as someone from Northwest Florida (we don’t drink sweet tea and we fish for redfish and mullet, not bass), I’ve often felt the magazine in some ways sitting in judgment of my Southerness. Thank you for helping me to see that I’m not alone, and that there is another identity that is far more important. Great, great insights! -J
A-freaking-men, Ginger. I love G&G, but you’re dead on. Hell of a post – wish I’d written it. Bravo.
Jeff,
Ahem…. in SC, it is a spottail bass, not redfish. But, rest assured,
a mullet is a mullet wherever its caught.
Ginger – Maybe Garden and Guns did not adequately define who or what is “Southern.” You are obviously thankful for your Southern heritage. In our family, when someone offers an opinion that we question and possibly disagree with, we say “Water off of a duck’s back.”… Great insights…thank you.
Fisherman’s wife
From someone whose lack of southern-ness has been a (perceived) liability for 14 years, I am refreshed to count the author and most of these commenters as friends- a reassurance of grace amid my carpet-bagger ways. Thank you, and amen.
We’re not all the same down heah, as I’m sure my grandmother would affirm, with a sotto voce Thank God from my mom. G&G… well you know… it’s a bit self-consciously campy I think. We’ve seen what we’ve seen and we know what we know, honeychile.
(And if only Dick Ewell had taken that hill at Gettysburg…)
beautifully written, ginge!!!
That was so beautifully written, witty, insightful, thought provoking, that I’m insecure that even my comment won’t be eloquent enough. What a Wonderful post!!
As I have repeatedly told my non-Southern friends, “Y’all just don’t understand that there are all kinds of different Southern accents. Alabama sounds nothing like Virginia which sounds different from Georgia which is not the same as Tennessee…” etc. It seems to me that defining one (and only one) way to be Southern is the common mistake of most outsiders, an error not usually found among those who grew up there. Which makes me wonder who really publishes that magazine. I have never read Garden and Gun, but I reckon I wouldn’t like it much. My parents, who have plenty of both garden and gun, would probably not recognize anything the advertisers were selling. Thanks for speaking for the rest of us!