I thought it would be interesting to interview a few friends who embody the idea of “just a pinch of south:” Southern expats, Yankees who have sojourned in the South, and others who have a little Southern in their lives.
My first interview is with my friend, author and blogger, Amy Julia Becker. She writes about “culture, faith, disability, education, reproductive technology, birth control , sex and sexuality, and parenting” often in the context of personal essays. Her second book is a memoir about the arrival of her daughter Penny, and she has been published in the Huffington Post and other places.
Amy Julia and I met when we were both teenagers at a camp in Massachusetts. She lived in Greenwich Connecticut, went to boarding school at Taft, and was on her way to Princeton. What I didn’t know until later was that Amy Julia spent the first ten years of her life in Edenton, North Carolina, when her father moved the family there for work. The picture above shows her with her parents in Edenton. Amy Julia doesn’t have a southern accent, but that double name should have been a tip off that she wasn’t just your typical New England blue blood even if her family originally settled in Connecticut in the 1600’s.
We had a far ranging conversation about the South and Southerness. Here are a few highlights.
JaPoS: You spent the first 10 years of your life in the South, then you moved to Connecticut. Your parents are from Connecticut, and you live there now. Here’s the question: do you consider yourself to be a Southerner?
AJB: You know I was thinking about that, and I would say no. I would say that it’s not just being born or even raised [in the South], but where your family is from.
JaPoS: So then is there anything about you that you say, “Well, this is a little bit Southern about me.”
AJB: I think my name is my primary mark of Southern identity. You certainly do not run across any people from the North who’ve got a name like Amy Julia. [My name] came directly from my parents moving to North Carolina, wanting to honor two of my great grandmothers by naming me for both, and then insisting on calling me by both names. I could have chosen to be Amy or Julia somewhere along the way, but I was really glad to have the name itself, and glad to have the story that comes with it: my transplanted Yankee parents got so swept away by living in this quaint small town in North Carolina that my name has marked me as not quite from Connecticut ever since.
JaPoS: How do you think the 10 years you spent as a child in the South have influenced you as a writer?
AJB: Edenton was not a particularly bookish or literary place, and so in some ways the fact that I always loved reading and writing from a really early age meant that I was an oddball. There was no bookstore in our town, so as a voracious lover of books, I spent all sorts of time at the library, ordering books, and reading books multiple times because I couldn’t get other copies of books. It might seem like that would have stunted my growth as a writer and reader, but it made me feel kind of special to be the one who is known as the “girl who reads,” and “the girl who writes.”
I have such strong and fond memories of my time living and growing up in Edenton. The racial relationships between white and black were much more a part of everyday life in North Carolina than they were in Connecticut. That certainly brought with it some of the very negative evidences of racism but it also brought with it friendships, mutual caring, and understanding. There was a woman named Marie who worked for us in Edenton. I remember that she’d grown up poor, without being able to read, without any education, without many rights. Even after we moved, my parents were still in really regular contact with her. When she was about 75, Marie called my dad and asked him if he would be willing to pay for a pair of reading glasses because she wanted to learn how to read. Of course he [bought the glasses] and she did learn to read. [It impacted me] just knowing that story and being a part of her life and having her as a part of ours. [Situations like] that certainly can happen in the North but in a small town you’re physically sharing the same space with people even though there are all these cultural and historical barriers. I think that really shaped me, and I am really grateful for that.
At Princeton I was and English major but I also got a certificate in African American Studies reading primarily African American literature. That pretty directly stems from growing up in Edenton and thinking a lot about the racial relationships there. I then began paying attention to the ways in which these stories were told through the African American canon of literature.
Also the role of storytelling in the South, and the rhythms of Southern writers influenced me. I spent a lot of time reading particularly Southern American writers: a lot of Faulkner, a lot of Flannery O’Connor, a lot of Toni Morrison (who is not so much Southern as she is African American but certainly the story of African Americans in the South is pretty present in her books). I hope they’ve influenced how I write, how I tell stories, and the ability to do that with kind of a slow pace, yet one that is welcoming and inviting. I hope my writing feels kind of like coming into one of those big beautiful Edenton houses and having a cup of tea or a good meal.
Whether she claims to be a Southerner or not, Amy Julia Becker confesses that her favorite Southern food is sweet potato biscuits with ham. An excellent choice. Buy her book, A Good and Perfect Gift here.
(Source: amyjuliabecker.com)
