Letters to the Editor
-
re: "a little short story from the South"
Hey, HFK, I was thinking maybe Eudora Welty or Flannery O'Connor. But you know what? I am from the South myself and I am sensitive to the kind of prejudice you seem to be talking about. And I don't think just being from the South gives me some special rights, like if you're black you can use certain epithets and things like that. it didn't occur to me. I just didn't think it was so offensive. it just seemed like a little short story set in the south. I didn't mean the racial prejudice angle so much as the strange, secretive method, like stories I used to hear of surreptitious things rural people would do. But whatever. I do agree that people who are not from the South are often wrong about the South. But I meant what I said. It sounds like a short story set in the South. Though maybe it happened in L.A. I don't know where it happened. I associate oleander with the south, too, though I guess they grow everywhere.
Anyway, just saying, born in Virginia, raised in Florida, family all in the South, southern through and through, didn't think it was such a bad thing to say. sorry you were offended. don't live in the south anymore. live in san francisco. big deal. gotta go weed the garden.