Southern Discomfort
A Memoir
(Sprache: Englisch)
For readers of beloved memoirs like Educated and The Glass Castle, a riveting and profoundly ...
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For readers of beloved memoirs like Educated and The Glass Castle, a riveting and profoundly moving memoir set in rural Mississippi during the Civil Rights era about a white girl coming of age in a repressive society and the woman who gave her the strength to forge her own path-the black nanny who cared for her. Tena Clark was born in 1953 in a tiny Mississippi town close to the Alabama border, where the legacy of slavery and racial injustice still permeated every aspect of life. On the outside, Tena's childhood looked like a fairytale. Her father was one of the richest men in the state; her mother was a regal beauty. The family lived on a sprawling farm and had the only swimming pool in town; Tena was given her first car-a royal blue Camaro-at twelve.
But behind closed doors, Tena's life was deeply lonely, and chaotic. By the time she was three, her parents' marriage had dissolved into a swamp of alcohol, rampant infidelity, and guns. Adding to the turmoil, Tena understood from a very young age that she was different from her three older sisters, all of whom had been beauty queens and majorettes. Tena knew she didn't want to be a majorette-she wanted to marry one.
On Tena's tenth birthday, her mother, emboldened by alcoholism and enraged by her husband's incessant cheating, walked out for good, instantly becoming an outcast in society. Tena was left in the care of her black nanny, Virgie, who became Tena's surrogate mother and confidante-even though she was raising nine of her own children and was not allowed to eat from the family's plates or use their bathroom. It was Virgie's acceptance and unconditional love that gave Tena the courage to stand up to her domineering father, the faith to believe in her mother's love, and the strength to be her true self.
Combining the spirit of poignant coming-of-age memoirs such as The Glass Castle and vivid, evocative Southern fiction like Fried Green Tomatoes, Southern Discomfort is about
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the people and places that shape who we are-and is destined to become a new classic.
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Southern Discomfort Prologue Where I grew up, girls like me knew our place. We were expected to smile politely and keep our white-gloved hands folded neatly in our laps when we sat in church. We spoke only when spoken to. We said: "Yes, sir," and "No, thank you, ma'am," and "Why yes, some sweet tea would be just fine." Back talk was not an option. We did not ask: "Why?" We did not say: "That doesn't seem fair." We were expected to wear stiff, pressed dresses even under the blazing Mississippi sun, and to have perfectly curled hair and lightly powdered faces in the drenching humidity. As we grew up, we understood that stepping off the prescribed path in any way meant risking it all, and probably losing.
Where I'm from, men like my father-rich, Cadillac-driving, Klan-sympathizing men-made the money. Women like my mother-beautiful, charming, educated only in how to entertain-ran the houses. If these women had any dreams beyond tending to their husbands, babies, and barbeques, they kept those thoughts to themselves.
Black maids, like the two women who tended to me-first, Viola; then Virgie-raised the white children they cared for but were not allowed to sit at the family table, drink from the family's cups, or ride in the front seat of their cars.
Black men and children were still called "boy," as in "What are you starin' at, boy?" And "nigger," as in, "I'm gonna need a few more niggers to pick my pecans this year." If you recoiled from the word, if it made your stomach clench and your insides boil, you were considered a "nigger lover," a dangerous insult. And if word of your sympathies spread, your family feared waking in the middle of the night to a burning cross on the lawn, or a brick thrown through the dining room window during supper.
If your glamorous, tortured wife became an alcoholic, like my mother did, you sent her away to the state mental hospital in a straitjacket to dry out. If your husband was a notorious skirt-chaser, like my father
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was, you might pull your .38 Colt out at the dinner table and chase him around the house, threatening to kill him right then and there, but only after your dinner guests had left for the evening.
And if you were a lesbian, before you even knew there was a word for the feelings you had had for as long as you could remember, you suppressed this fundamental part of yourself for as long as you possibly could. You lived a lie. You kissed boys and wore their fraternity pins, curled your hair, entered beauty pageants, joined a sorority. You and your friends talked about wedding cakes, honeymoons, and how many babies you wanted, just like you were supposed to. Because that's what good girls did.
Appearances mattered above all. "That's just the way it is" and "Let it be" were common refrains.
* * *
Growing up in Waynesboro, Mississippi, in the heart of the Jim Crow Deep South, I never thought there was any other way than the way it had always been. No one I knew ever ventured farther north than Memphis or maybe Nashville, and that was just fine with them.
My roots ran deep into the red earth; the land felt as much a part of me as my limbs, my heart. I hated it with a fury. I loved it with an all-consuming passion. This is the great paradox of the South. It's a savage place, a complicated place, and yet it still burrows into you, like the fangs of one of the water moccasins I used to hunt as a young girl down on the Chickasawhay River behind our farm. There's venom in the soil. But there's an alluring beauty in it as well.
For a time, I assumed I had no choice but to stay on the straight and narrow path that had been laid out for me since birth. I'd wear the pressed dresses, the curled hair, the pin. I'
And if you were a lesbian, before you even knew there was a word for the feelings you had had for as long as you could remember, you suppressed this fundamental part of yourself for as long as you possibly could. You lived a lie. You kissed boys and wore their fraternity pins, curled your hair, entered beauty pageants, joined a sorority. You and your friends talked about wedding cakes, honeymoons, and how many babies you wanted, just like you were supposed to. Because that's what good girls did.
Appearances mattered above all. "That's just the way it is" and "Let it be" were common refrains.
* * *
Growing up in Waynesboro, Mississippi, in the heart of the Jim Crow Deep South, I never thought there was any other way than the way it had always been. No one I knew ever ventured farther north than Memphis or maybe Nashville, and that was just fine with them.
My roots ran deep into the red earth; the land felt as much a part of me as my limbs, my heart. I hated it with a fury. I loved it with an all-consuming passion. This is the great paradox of the South. It's a savage place, a complicated place, and yet it still burrows into you, like the fangs of one of the water moccasins I used to hunt as a young girl down on the Chickasawhay River behind our farm. There's venom in the soil. But there's an alluring beauty in it as well.
For a time, I assumed I had no choice but to stay on the straight and narrow path that had been laid out for me since birth. I'd wear the pressed dresses, the curled hair, the pin. I'
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Autoren-Porträt von Tena Clark
Tena Clark is a Grammy Award-winning songwriter, music producer, and activist. She lives in Atlanta. Southern Discomfort is her first book.
Bibliographische Angaben
- Autor: Tena Clark
- 2018, 304 Seiten, Maße: 14,6 x 22,1 cm, Gebunden, Englisch
- Verlag: Touchstone
- ISBN-10: 1501167944
- ISBN-13: 9781501167942
- Erscheinungsdatum: 25.09.2018
Sprache:
Englisch
Pressezitat
"Powerful, upsetting, and deeply hopeful, Tena Clark's SOUTHERN DISCOMFORT is the brutal and true story of a family coming apart in a fracturing South told from the point of a view of a girl who makes peace with what she survived, fled and eventually came home to. A brave, wildly engrossing memoir." Bill Clegg, author of Did You Ever Have a Family
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