Hello and welcome to my very first Southern-Fried Grit post. I don’t want it to be confused with the grits we eat here in the south or the acronym for girls raised in the south. While they’re both great and capable of getting you through the winter, the grit I want to focus on is the determination and strength of characters represented in southern fiction. Yeah, that kind of grit. Think, the Kid in Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian.
Once upon a time I compared southern literature to wine because not all grapes are perfect; they’re bruised and damaged, some probably have bugs, but it’s okay because those blemishes make that wine taste sweet. The same is true for a work of fiction that puts on display the southern character forged out of hard-packed clay, pinesap and the belief in mythological creatures that came over with our ancestors. We truly are a conflated group here in the south and we got stories to prove it.
Feel free to comment and share some wisdom. If you’ve read a book or story that exposes some southern grit, let me know.
Writer Lora Kempka 