“Growing up in Fitzgerald, I lived in an intense microcosm, where your neighbor knows what you're going to do even before you do, where you can recognize a family gene pool by the lift of an eyebrow, or the length of a neck, or a way of walking. What is said, what is left to the imagination, what is denied, withheld, exaggerated-all these secretive, inverted things informed my childhood. Writing the stories that I found in the box, I remember being particularly fascinated by secrets kept in order to protect someone from who you are. That protection, sharpest knife in the drawer, I absorbed as naturally as a southern accent. At that time, I was curious to hold up to the light glimpses of the family that I had so efficiently fled. We were remote-back behind nowhere-when I was growing up, but even so, enormous social change was about to crumble foundations. Who were we, way far South? "We're south of everywhere," my mother used to lament.” SouthBiographyGeorgiaSouthernersFrances Mayes Book:Under Magnolia: A Southern Memoir Source: Under Magnolia: A Southern Memoir
“Living in a small Italian hilltown, and having lived in a small town in south Georgia, I understand that you can recognize a family gene pool by the lift of an eyebrow, or the length of a neck, or a way of walking.” WayWalkingTownsSouthLiftsNecksLengthItalianPoolGenesSmall TownEyebrowsGeorgia Author:Frances Mayes
“I was born and grew up in Fitzgerald, way down in south Georgia. It was a mill town and my family ran the cotton mill. My grandfather was mayor many times and my family felt deeply rooted to that spot.” WayFeltBornGrewGrew UpMy FamilyTownsSouthSpotsRanRootedGrandfatherMy GrandfatherGeorgiaMayorsCottonMills Author:Frances Mayes
