My Apocryphal Country [Guest Post]

by Alex Bledsoe

[Alex is a published author and I was humbled when he agreed to do this post. I'm also a fan of his after reading The Hum and the Shiver. I am now (im)patiently awaiting its sequel, The Wisp of a Thing. -Drew]


Three of my seven novels are set in the South, specifically in my home state of Tennessee. Two, Blood Groove and its sequel, The Girls with Games of Blood, take place in and around Memphis, a real city. The third, The Hum and the Shiver, occurs in the made-up town of Needsville.

So why the difference? Why use a real place for one story, and an imaginary one for another?

The tradition of fictional Southern places, at least in the popular consciousness, goes back to Faulkner and his tales set in Yoknapatawpha County, Mississippi. Beginning with 1929's Sartoris, he set most of his subsequent novels and stories in that made-up bit of geography. He called it his "apocryphal country."

The advantages of using a fictional place are obvious. You don't have to worry
about accuracy, or offending the residents (for the most part; I'll get to the
exception). You can put anything in it that your story requires. It's really no
different than making up the kingdoms and countries in my other, pure fantasy
novels.

But fictional places, for the most part, carry no weight of reality. It's possible
to fake it, to imply a heavily involved past, but it's never the same. For famous
cities, it's even more difficult. Just the name “Memphis” brings to mind Elvis, BB
King, barbeque, the Mississippi River, Martin Luther King, Jr., high crime, weak
education, and even a huge, actual pyramid. If you tried to create analogs to all
these things in a fictional city, you'd run the risk of looking silly. Why not just use
the real thing and be done with it? So I did. I dropped hard-core, scary vampires
into actual 1975 Memphis.

But I put the Tufa, my mythical race of Southern folk-singing faeries, in the made-
up east Tennessee town of Needsville, located in the equally mythical Cloud
County. I wanted the same thing Faulkner did: a landscape that I could shape to
echo the themes and characters of the stories. I wanted to put certain characters
in the mountains, others in the valley, still others at the edges of the county,
looking in. Yes, it's based loosely on a real place, the same way Lafayette
County inspired Yoknapatawpha. But when you're talking about a small town
and not a big urban area, it just seems polite to make it fictional.

Of course, that doesn't always help. In the 1960s, author Jesse Hill Ford set The
Liberation of Lord Byron Jones, a sensational examination of small-town racism,
in fictional Somerton, Tennessee. However, his neighbors in real-life Humboldt
had no trouble seeing their town in his book, and weren't terribly delighted to be
depicted as corrupt, ignorant racist rednecks. Things did not work out well for
Mr. Ford.

Still, Yoknapatawpha County, Somerton, my own Cloud County and Needsville,
all give writers an option they don't get in real life: the chance to work in a
landscape that mirrors the inner life of their characters. Conversely, places
like Memphis, New Orleans, or Atlanta give readers a common ground with the
story's characters, a chance to go and literally walk in their footsteps. And both
have a proud tradition in Southern literature, of which I am delighted to be a new,
tiny part.

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Alex Bledsoe grew up in west Tennessee an hour north of Graceland and twenty minutes from Nutbush. He's been a reporter, editor, photographer and door-to-door vacuum cleaner salesman. He now lives in a Wisconsin town famous for trolls, writes before six in the morning and tries to teach his two sons to act like they’ve been to town before.

My South: Greek and Proud of it!

By Rachel

My Great-Grandfather immigrated from Greece near the turn of the century into our country that, at the time, was quite prejudiced against Greeks. Despite the general feelings of animosity, however, he must have been somewhat charming – he convinced my Great-Grandmother to marry him before he knew a word of English or she knew a word of Greek.

I never knew him, but his belief in the value of Greek culture must have been magnificent. they had five children, all who had a very firm grasp on what it meant to be Greek, and how to pridefully carry on the traditions of our culture.

Our holidays, especially Easter, were always celebrated with Roasted Lamb, Spanakopitas, Greek Easter Bread, and Kalamata Olives and Feta Cheese.

(The real olives and Feta Cheese, bought where they should be, in a plastic bag from Nabeel’s Imported foods.)

All of this was delightfully mixed with my Great-Grandmothers truly southern Macaroni and Cheese, my Grandmother’s famed biscuit recipe, Chocolate cake, and Chicken and Dumplins’, of course. I found that Greek Food and Southern food made a delightful combination.

My Aunt Helen was infamous for her ability to read your fortune from the coffee grounds in the bottom of your cup, and loved to spice up a family gathering by cranking up the Greek music and breaking out into dance.

My Granddad, while being truly proud of his Greek heritage and sharing his Greek roots with anyone he was around, was also in the Hillbilly Brigade with the Zamora Temple Shriners, where he dressed up in overalls and a straw hat and drove around acting as southern as possible in his 1920’s Model T.

In proper Greek fashion (and made famous by the movie “My Big Fat Greek Wedding”), I was made to go to Greek School. Despite several years of study of the Greek language, I don’t remember much, except for the Greek girl Penelope who sat next to me, and the boy who sat on the other side of me with thick, black, oozing earwax.

(Sorry for that. I don’t know if thick, black, oozing earwax has anything to do with Greek culture or not, but it is certainly associated in my mind.)

But, much more than earwax, Greeks are known for their food.

My Father went into the Air Force as a teenager, and when his platoon formed, the commanding officer yelled out, “Who in here is Greek?” Dad was the only one to raise his hand, and so was immediately assigned the job of being the cook for the entire platoon.

My Mother is not Greek and did not know how to cook when they got married, but my Father taught her well. I am so thankful that she learned to cook like a Greek woman, and taught me all of those amazing recipes as well.

(Some of these Famiy Recipes can be found on my blog, if you’re interested.)

Besides cooking Greek, I am thrilled beyond measure to live in a city that is full of amazing Greek and Mediterranean restaurants, such as Dodiyos, Nabeel’s, Taziki’s, Zoës, The Fish Market, Jim N Nicks (did you know they were Greek?? I told you all good cooks are Greek.), all of the Sarris family restaurants, and I’m sure a ton of others that I’m not thinking about right now.

So, if you haven’t tried some Greek food lately, you might want to. I promise – you’ll want to get up and dance, and maybe even read someone’s coffee ground fortune.

Rachel writes at Grasping for Objectivity . . . and Alabama Bloggers.

My South - Wade Kwon

East meets South: The Korean-redneck dinner table

By Wade Kwon

Most of you did not grow up as I did. Asian. American. Southern. Non-Baptist.

Perhaps the best way to show a glimpse of my unique childhood is to have you sit at our dinner table at our suburban home in Hoover, Ala. One night, we'd have American food. The next night, Korean food. This is how I thought other families ate, until I noticed a distinct lack of kimchi at friends' dinner tables.

So we'd have spaghetti, with sauce from a jar. Or tacos, from the kit. Or roast beef, scalloped potatoes (from the box, which I loved) and green beans (from a can).

Other nights, we'd have bulgogi (marinated barbecued beef) and rice. Or mandoo (which you probably call wonton), or ttok kuk (rice cake soup).

We ate in the kitchen, almost never the dining room. And the TV set would be on.

Keep in mind that my mom prepared just about all the meals, and that was after a long day of work and sometimes a 2-hour round-trip commute. Dad was not in charge of the grill; we didn't have one, save for a small hibachi that was never used. We didn't cook out.

And sometimes, we'd have both Korean and American at the same meal. I thought nothing of it, just enjoyed eating and eating and eating. Saturday nights, we'd go out to eat, and every so often, we'd bring home two Little Caesar's pizzas.

I didn't eat kimchi as a child, nor did I ever learn to speak or read Korean. A friend's mother insisted I must have picked up some by linguistic osmosis, until I pointed out that I didn't speak dog either despite having our family pet bark at me enthusiastically for years.

Sometimes, my friend Kenn (who blogs at Dairy of a Madman) would join us for dinner. He was game, despite the odd sights and smells on the table (and the occasional surprise tub of tiny dried fish heads in the fridge). He best recalls what I took as normal.

When he and I go out for hot pots and rice (sadly, I don't know how to reproduce the dishes of my youth), the experience takes him back to our Korean-redneck dinner table decades ago. It is a needed reminder that Southern hospitality extended across ethnicities for a shared experience.

Wade Kwon is a communications consultant and writer. He shares news and features about his hometown on his site, Wade on Birmingham.

My South

My South is a series I've invited a few bloggers to take part in.  (So I stole the name from Turner South, but it doesn't exist anymore so I'm gonna use it.)  Many people in the South have a normal Southern heritage.  Many have Native American blood, others are just generically German or English.  But there are a few that grow up with a very unique heritage.  I am one of those Southerners and I wanted to hear about everyone else with an interesting background that grew up in the South or have spent a great deal of time here.

Next week, Okra Cola is proud to have Wade Kwon as the first guest post!  This is big for me because it was an idea I pitched and somebody dug it as much as I did and actually wrote it! 

If you are interested in telling the world about your heritage and growing up in the South drop me a line at drew [at] okra cola [dot] com and we'll see what happens.