The Southern Fifteen

IN HONOR OF OUR 15TH ANNIVERSARY ISSUE, WE ASKED STORYTELLER TIM LOWRY TO GIVES US FIFTEEN OF HIS ESSENTIAL SOUTHERN READS (In no particular order)

By Tim Lowery

Southerners are great storytellers. That’s because we take every opportunity to practice the art form. We linger in the grocery store line to inquire about the check out girl’s mother. We stop our pickup trucks smack in the middle of a two lane road to say howdy to a neighbor. We loiter at the beauty or barbershop to chat with the next costumer in the chair. We always take time to talk. What do we talk about? Well, we tend to begin with an anecdote starting with the phrase, “You ain’t gonna believe what I saw up to the Wal-Mart yesterday!” Of course, the proper response to such a tale is, “Well, I never! Back in my day . . .” After recent history is rehearsed, someone utters the traditional “Kids these days!” Which prompts a round of stories and jokes that just don’t play well on TikTok. You know, like the monkey story. What? You never heard the monkey story? Sit down. And we are off and rolling with stories that can’t possibly have happened but are nonetheless told as true. After a particularly audacious stretcher, someone in the conversation group feels morally obligated to pull things back in a more serious direction which leads to legendary tales of great heroes and heroines, epics that sometimes veer into mythology. The Civil War must be fought again and again and again. We keep trying to find a happier ending. Eventually, we realize that such stories, outside of Divine intervention, may never have a perfect conclusion. So we wrap up our gab sessions by recognizing our flaws as we say “It’s been good talking with you. I’ll see you in church.”

Inevitably, the best stories get written down. Here are fifteen titles from my own bookshelf that would give you plenty of material to hold your own as a Southern raconteur.

Fifteen Books (besides the Bible) from a Southerner’s Bookshelf

The List

“You ain’t gonna believe what I saw up to the Wal-Mart yesterday!”
A little scandal goes a long way toward grabbing your listener’s attention. These authors can show you how it’s done.

Carryin’ On, and Other Strange Things Southerners Do (R. Scott Brunner)
Baptized in Sweet Tea (Ken Burger)
Being Dead Is No Excuse: The Official Southern Ladies Guide to Hosting the Perfect Funeral (Gayden Metcalfe and Charlotte Hays)

“Back in my day . . .”
Don’t be put off by the fact that two of these works are holiday memoirs. These are excellent Southern storytellers, not script writers for Hallmark.

A Christmas Memory (Truman Capote)
Cold Sassy Tree (Olive Ann Burns)
Carolina Christmas: Archibald Rutledge’s Enduring Holiday Stories  (Jim Casada, editor) 

“You don’t know the monkey story?!”
As my grandpa would say, “A lie is a sin, but this story ain’t no lie.”

The Jack Tales (Richard Chase)
Gullah Animal Tales from Daufuskie Island, South Carolina (Albert H. Stoddard)
The Doctor to the Dead: Grotesque Legends and Folk Tales of Old Charleston (John Bennett)

Fighting the Civil War, again!
Two of these books are by men from “off.” However, their perspective helped me see Southern culture more clearly.

Gone With The Wind (Margaret Mitchell)
Confederates in the Attic: Dispatches from the Unfinished Civil War (Tony Horwitz)
Bloody Crimes: The Chase for Jefferson Davis and The Death Pageant for Lincoln’s Corpse (James Swanson)

“I’ll see you in church.”
Of course, Southerners read the Bible, but these titles really get to the heart of what we are praying for, how to become the best version of ourselves.

To Kill a Mockingbird (Harper Lee)
Huckleberry Finn (Mark Twain)
Yearning to Breathe Free: Robert Smalls of South Carolina and His Families (Andrew Billingsly)