What Is A Southern Writer, Anyway?

This NY Times Opinion piece from Margaret Renkl, What Is a Southern Writer, Anyway?, is mostly a tribute piece to the late Jim Ridley; a writer from the Nashville area that grew to become Editor of the local alt-weekly, The Nashville Scene. She talks about Ridley's accomplishments and questions the ideas around being a "Southern Writer" - i.e. Faulkner, Welty, O'Connor.

While the piece is about writers it can really be applied to a larger scope of people. What is it about Southerners and their loyalty to the South - even when it seems at odds with their being? Ridley could have easily left town and become an established writer for any number of publications, the Times included, but chose to stay in Nashville. The final paragraph hits home in a heavy way, particularly as someone that moved back to The South and struggles with its massively conservative values.

Maybe being a Southern writer has always been more than stereotypes of ceiling fans and panting dogs in dirt yards. Maybe being a Southern writer is only a matter of loving a damaged and damaging place, of loving its flawed and beautiful people, so much that you have to stay there, observing and recording and believing, against all odds, that one day it will finally live up to the promise of its own good heart.

There's a lot to digest there (for me). Are Southerners guilted into staying to fight the good fight? Is it an altruistic endeavor? Does The South even have the good heart that we assume it does.

Living in a state that is always Red and runs rampant with racism, homophobia and general isolationism is not exclusive to The South but it's certainly what it is known for. I don't know why I stay but I do think we're better than that and there's plenty of us that feel otherwise. I can only hope that my little pieces of contribution can help yield a different thinking about those of us below the Mason-Dixon.