Tearing off the Tag

I was born in Savannah, Georgia. You just don’t get much more southern than that, right? As a child, I was expected to act a certain way. It was like I came out with one of tag like the one attached to a pillow (you know that says you’ll be prosecuted under the law if you yank it off). The tag read, “Be well-mannered, do what you’re told, know your place, stand by your man, and above all, drink plenty of sweet tea.”

I don’t think I quite fit the mold. As I absorbed myself in a little research, I found that most notable strong southern women whether past or present don’t either, maybe except for the manners part. I have to admit I bucked authority when I was young, determined to do things my way in spite of consequences, and to the dismay of my poor mother (God rest her prim and proper soul). I look back and have to admit I should have done a few things differently, but for the most part, I have no regrets.

As I write, I create characters who are far from perfect—southern women who don’t necessarily keep their pillow tag attached as they walk through life but eventually find their own strengths, who overcome the insecurities they attain in childhood, the ones they don’t like to talk about, the ones which haunt them unto adulthood. To me, this makes them strong. They don’t give up; they do what needs to be done. They take care of others, but they also make sure they take care of themselves.

In my second novel, Relative Consequences, the protagonist, Jessy, confronts her past and makes a decision that affects her life, her family and also, the lives of others. She makes the choice first out of anger, then she comes to the conclusion it’s the right thing to do. Her character is vulnerable yet strong.

I recently read a 2014 article in Signature Magazine (on online publication) about one of my favorite southern authors, Fannie Flagg. Now, there’s a remarkable southern woman who overcame an adversity and immersed herself in success doing what she loved to do. I hope someday I can meet her.

Fannie Flagg was born Patricia Neal in 1944 in Birmingham, Alabama to working class parents. She is an actor as well as a writer and has always been someone I admire. As a child, she was told she couldn’t write and she was a terrible speller. Later in life, she was diagnosed with dyslexia. Through time she overcame her fear of making mistakes and in the 1970s began writing novels and continues to write today.

Some of her more famous works are Daisy Fay and the Miracle Man, Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Café and her most recent, The Whole Town’s Talking, which was published in 2016. According to her biography from www.litlovers.com, “As a writer . . . this Birmingham, Alabama native found her voice as a chronicler of Southern Americana and life in its self-contained hamlets.” If you haven’t read any of her novels, please do. You won’t be disappointed in the words of this southern woman who in 2012 won the prestigious Harper Lee Award as Alabama’s Distinguished Writer of the Year.

Here’s just a couple of my favorite quotes from Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe:

“Remember if people talk behind your back, it only means you
are two steps ahead.”

“Are you a politician or does lying run in your family?”

“It wasn’t death she was afraid of. It was this life of hers that
was beginning to remind her of that gray intensive care
waiting room.”

“There are magnificent beings on this earth, son, that are walking around posing as
humans.”

My next blog will be posted around March 13. I will be hosting a guest blogger —
Author, Lauren Koffler Denton, another southern girl!!

See ya then!

Jody