the south — Blog — Robyn Ritchie

When people would ask where I'm from, I used to stutter.

A thousand things ran through my mind—what is from, exactly? Well, I was born in LA and lived there in the years I wasn't making memories. Okay, well, I made one or two, and they sit in a corner of my mind all dilapidated with time. A palm tree here, maybe smog from back then is still in my lungs. Then I moved to Florida, yes, that place, the home state of Florida Man, and I became one with the hurricane. Then, like a final touch to my soul, I was shipped up to Tennessee and spent my late teen and new adult years there. I lost my virginity in the Tennessean grasses, I won awards at a Tennessean university.

When people ask where I'm from now, I just say Tennessee, but when I say that, am I lying? Seems a lot neater than to go into the previous paragraph and spew it in a slightly different syntax at every man making small talk at me.

Sure I wasn't born there but I know it, and more than know the geography, I know that without Tennessee (and to a great extent, Florida, though whether that is THE SOUTH is another conversation) I wouldn't possibly be me. (Whether that's a good or bad thing is also another conversation.)

Somewhere along the line I started identifying as a Southern writer. There's this little town an hour south of Nashville called Columbia where my parents lived for ten years; I went to visit for summers and the odd weekend. If someone ever asks me why I identify as such, I think the only real true answer I could give would be two words: "Columbia, Tennessee."

I don't think I've ever seen such a cute little town. Gorgeous, really, with a strange and hilarious history having to do with mules. The more time I spent there, the more time I wanted to be that, in whatever capacity I could be since I never lived there proper. I wanted to talk how the people talked and I wanted to go where they went. The book store, the antique store, parks and old barns and trails and creeks that sounded like music in the dead of winter. Knowing, of course, I could never intrinsically be just like a Columbia-bred person, I decided to work it into my writing. So deep that they couldn't be separated. If I was ever going to be known as a writer, I would be known as a writer who put this place on the map—William Gay notwithstanding.

The novel my agent's currently shopping around takes place in a warped version of Columbia called White Hill. If you're ever in the area or just look at a map, you'll see Columbia is tied by a small stretch of highway to another town called Spring Hill—in the book, it's called Red Creek. Like bitter Southern sisters, Red Creek and White Hill bitch and fight and the older brags about getting her period and tits first, but in the end they do love each other for no other reason than they're blood.

Really, I don't know if I do the town justice. Towns. They're so beautiful which is why I've attached pictures. I follow some of their town officials on Twitter because I miss it and I have never lived there but I miss it so much it's sometimes physical pain. My parents don't even live there anymore. So I have no real reason to visit. But I think, sometime, I will go back just because.

So, on wanting to be something you're not:

I've told many people I'm from Tennessee. Sometimes, they say, "Wow! And no accent!" and I'll just grin and say I've been moved around too much for it to stick. But if you say you are something, and you want to be something, and you prove you love something, I think you can turn your blood a different color.