Tag: SheWrites

Native Texan, by Zetta Brown

Posted on by Louise Canfield


A person sitting on the ground in front of water.I was born in a very small North Texas town, and I was born a Negro…which became black…which became Afro/Black/African-American. But while American society came up with new names to call me based on my race, I just considered myself a Texan.

I remember as a child playing in the red dirt of my parent’s home town, eating Moon Pies, drinking grape Nehi or red cream sodas, giant pickles from a pickle jar, salt-and-vinegar chips like a home-grown Southern kid. I think it’s very telling that my earliest memories of living in the South centers around food.

Then we moved to Colorado and snow, which had been a novelty before but became a part of life. It didn’t take me long to realize that I’m not a huge fan of snow. My parents were surprised when we were showed homes in racially diverse neighborhoods. We wouldn’t be “blockbusting†after all.

Years later, circumstances and finances had me moving back to Texas and living with my parents. I was nervous at first, considering the stories my parents told me about growing up in the segregated South, but when I arrived and visited the small hometown my parents grew up in, I was shocked at what I saw.

A small North Texas town more racially integrated than some of the neighborhoods I left behind in Colorado.

After living in Colorado for 17 years, I came back to Texas. After living in Scotland for over seven years—I came back to Texas with my Scottish husband who loves it here.

Why? Because my roots run very deep here, unlike some of the politicians who have represented the state in recent history. Despite these “prominent†citizens, the people of Texas really are friendly, are caring, and do have common sense.

Living in Texas has made me appreciate history and especially the history of my family. History is nothing but a bunch of stories; some of it is fact, some of it is fiction, but it’s all about the story. Texans have been known to tell a tall tale or two.

The South is full of myths, legends, and stereotypes that mix in with reality and creates a wealth of inspiration for stories. But sometimes these elements turn into propaganda—for better or worse.

Is Texas perfect? Hell, no. Ever wondered why there are so many churches in the South? Because there’s a whole lotta sinnin’ goin’ on! You can’t take us at face value. You have to come and experience it for yourself.

So come on down to Texas. You may not have been born here, but like the bumper sticker says, you should get here as soon as you can.

Zetta Brown is an editor and the author of several published short stories and a novel. Her short story “Devil Don’t Want Her†is set in Texas and available as an ebook. She blogs about writing and editing at her Zetta’s Desk blog (zettasdesk.com) and has a featured blog at SheWrites.com called [REALITY CHECK]

The South Travels With Me by Sally Whitney

Posted on by Louise Canfield


A person sitting on the ground in front of water.Being southern is a vital part of who I am, a part I’ve never tried to disguise or discard. Growing up in North Carolina, I absorbed southern culture as easily as I inhaled air, and I thought about it just as much. It was my life; there was no need to question or remark on it.
The first time I realized southerners could be regarded as different, I was an undergraduate at Duke University. Although Duke is a southern school, many of its students come from other states and other countries. Not meaning any harm, they seemed unable to resist pointing out the oddity (to them) of our food, our wardrobes, and our accents.
Not long after college I left North Carolina and began a decades-long journey that included living in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Kansas, and New Jersey. I loved the people and the experiences I encountered in each of those states. My friends who live there will continue to be friends for the rest of my life. I learned from these women that we are more alike than different. Any preconceived ideas they had about me or I had about them were purely superficial. As co-workers, as elementary school parents, as church volunteers, we respected each other, even though our speech may have been peppered with different expressions and our food with different spices.
But that’s not to say I never had to defend my southern heritage. A New Jersey co-worker once asked me, “Why do southerners talk so slow?†Of course, the answer to that is easy: “Because we think before we speak.†Not a bad idea for anyone.
Most of the time—in fact, all of the time—my southern heritage is a blessing. Interest in people (chatting in the grocery store line always delivers entertaining tidbits), acceptance of the unusual (everybody in the south has a bizarre relative), reluctance to be rude in any situation (my mother would’ve disowned me if I ever ignored a comment made directly to me), and enduring patience (you don’t cut off somebody in line at the grocery store or on the way to the exit ramp) have served me well personally and professionally. As my son said when we were discussing the importance of manners in business: “You know, Mom, good manners are just treating other people like you want to be treated.â€
So I keep my southernisms with me all the time. I live in Maryland now, but no matter where I’ve lived, my sensibilities and my imagination live in the South. The short stories and novels I write are all set in the South, usually in North Carolina. And my leading characters are southern women. They’re intelligent, educated, perceptive, like many women everywhere, but they also have a vulnerability and compassion that I think are distinctly southern. Lydia Caton, protagonist of my new novel SURFACE AND SHADOW (coming from Pen-L Publishing in 2016) fights for her right to uncover the truth about a wealthy man’s suspicious death. Along the way, she’s drawn into helping the dead man’s mentally challenged granddaughter and his professionally trapped grandson.
She’s a complex southern woman—just like me.


And Sew It Goes

Posted on by Louise Canfield


A person sitting on the ground in front of water.

I love sewing. My mother sewed, and my grandmothers and their mothers before them. For my mother, it was cost effective, and my grandmothers had no other alternative. But there was something else about sewing; a sisterhood, a measure of womanhood. In my family, women who did not sew their own clothing, well, just didn’t quite measure up.

And their standards of a “good wife and home-maker†have stayed with me, below the level of consciousness, motivating me to sew, conjuring memories of trips to the fabric stores, of sitting with Mother at big wooden tables leafing through pattern books, matching fabric to patterns. I can see our dining room table draped with fabric, pattern pieces weighted with jelly jars, pincushions and thimbles strewn about, A person sitting on the ground in front of water.colored threads in sewing boxes, buttons in mason jars, scraps and pattern pieces littering the floor. I hear the crunch of scissors slicing through fabric, the whirr of the sewing machine motor, I inhale the musty-starch smell of new fabric. All is well. It’s magic. Something wonderful is being created.

Well, sometimes. Unfortunately, more times than not, even my mother’s finished product fell short of the vision in my head. First of all, my body bore little resemblance to the whimsical drawings of hourglass-shaped models. Secondly, neither of us was very good at matching fabric to garment, so the finished product never looked quite the way we had imagined.

My mother and grandmothers were all excellent seamstresses. I was not so blessed. I don’t have their patience nor did I inherit their sense of spatial relationship. Patterns always seemed to be written in some secret code. So it’s not surprising that my finished products left something to be desired. Hems were uneven, seamlines bulged, things were a little too loose here, too tight there. But so much had been invested! The fabric, the notions, the time! The pretense had to be maintained, at least for awhile. It wasn’t that bad! And besides, hadn’t Mother said, if you looked hard enough at a store-bought dress, you’d find mistakes? And the fabric in store-bought clothes is so flimsy things never last more than a season. That’s why we sew our own clothing….it’s just the right thing to do.

A person sitting on the ground in front of water.And so the charade continued through the years; untidy stacks of fabric hoarding closet space, sewing machines capable of every imaginable stitch and flourish, lavishly equipped sewing rooms, sewing classes. But still, garment after garment joined the procession from the front through the back of the closet, on its way to the charity bin. Each time I was sure this garment would be beautiful. I would build a wardrobe around it. I would be the envy of all my friends, whipping out these little fashion statements in my spare time. After all, I’m getting better at this, right?

Wrong.

Last week I began a pair of pants that I have planned for years. I bought the fabric during the Clinton administration. It was all the rage. And I had been waiting for just the right moment to whip them up. They would be stunning, long and flowing. Just the thing to set off a summer wardrobe. The pattern was dirt simple. What could possibly go wrong? I’d have it done in an afternoon.

But. It had pockets. Two of them. The first of which I put in backward. Twice. And then I sewed it in properly…on the outside of the pants leg. Once corrected, I put in the other pocket. Inside out. So now the top-stitching was on the wrong side. You get the drift. Each time I ripped out the seams, the edges frayed so that when they were re-sewn, everything got smaller. But after ripping out and re-sewing over three afternoons through countless Modern Family reruns, Viola! One slightly- smaller-than-expected-leg completed. Delighted, I held it up to the mirror. It was, well…awful. I tried to convince myself that it would look much better when the pants were finished and hemmed. Or perhaps I should just rip it out, put the pieces back together and make a skirt.

“What’s that?†my husband asked absently as I walked by carrying my failed pant-leg.

“Just something I’ve been sewing†I mumbled.

“But,” curious now, “what IS it?

“A pants leg?†I said defensively.

He looked confused. “You spent an entire WEEK on one pants leg? Aren’t there two?”

” Well, yes,” I said, “I ran into a little trouble. But now that I’ve got it down..”.my voice trailed off.

Amazingly, he didn’t laugh. “Did you enjoy doing it?†he asked, gently.

I said nothing.

“Hey! Give yourself a break! Go to Chico’s and buy some pants.,†he said, going back to his magazine.

Although the need for pants was never the point, I think I’ll take his advice. It’s been a painful lesson, too long in coming. I am just not good at this. It will be humbling to find a home for all that fabric, the patterns, and expensive dress form. But it’s such a relief to honor my limitations and give myself permission to do what I like rather than what I think someone else expects of me. For years I have tried to sew clothing to meet my concept of my mothers’ standards for a good wife and homemaker. Although I knew on a conscious level that the days are long gone when it was more expensive to buy than to sew clothes, the irrationality of my obsession to master the art of garment sewing completely escaped me. Early lessons are not easily unlearned, if ever. I bet my mothers would have jumped at the chance to shop at Chico’s. And I’m amazed that it took a week of rainy afternoons in retirement for me to realize that it was my unrealistic expectations, not those of my mothers, that have been hounding me all these years.

But I won’t give up the comforting connection with my mothers that sewing provides. I need something that doesn’t require a pattern or have to fit anything. And something I actually enjoy! Maybe I’ll try quilting. I can even use some of that fabric stash. I think my Mothers will be relieved. They must have been cringing all these years.

 

Photography from Flickr Creative Commons:  Sewing room; Kristen Roach;  Simplicity Dress: Carbonated; Sewing : plaisanter

Why write?

Posted on by Louise Canfield


A person sitting on the ground in front of water.As of 8:00 P.M. tonight, 48,173,673 books are available from Amazon.  Of those, over 3 million titles were in literature and fiction, over 1 million in spirituality and religion, over 500,000 in biography and memoir, and almost 2 million in money and business.  Of these, 2,535,376 were e-books,  103,023 were released in the past 30 days and 46,226 were self-published.  And that’s just Amazon.

What are all those books about?  Who wrote them?  Who READS them?  More to the point, who buys them, and which ones?  Food for thought if one aspires to writing as a career.  Even if writing is an avocation, it gives one pause.

So why write? Why indeed.  Aside from the discouraging statistics  above, there are many practical reasons  NOT to write.  Here are a few that come to mind:

1.  The world does not want and certainly does not need a book about “My Heroic Life,† no matter how interesting I think it has been.  Everyone thinks their life is the most interesting.

2.  Writing is hard work and extremely time-consuming.  It’s hard to find  time to get dressed and eat balanced meals, let alone sustain human relationships (although dogs are more forgiving).

3.  Writers must endure increasing levels of rejection.  First come the humiliating rejection letters from publishers.  Then once published, threats of lawsuits from outraged relatives alleging exposure of their disgusting secrets, and, if one is finally successful, hate mail from crazies.  Writers, overly sensitive by nature, are ill-prepared for such abuse and cannot afford the psychological care needed to overcome it.

4.  Writing is expensive.  First there is the laptop – a must-have.  One needs a well-stocked library of classics and writers in one’s genre as well as a respectable stash of writers’ self-help books, membership in writers guilds, attendance at workshops, and (highly recommended) a cabin in the wilderness without distractions of neighbors, family, and social media.

5.  Writing is not good for your health.  Working for long hours at a computer is linked to a myriad of health problems including back pain, headache, poor diet, and depression, to name a few.

I could name others; there are many  excellent reasons not to write.  To tell the truth,  I can’t really think of a good reason to write.  Can’t speak for anyone else, but for me, I write because – It’s just what I do.