Female Southern Authors

While lots of us are thinking about what we want to read either in the backyard hammock, on the beach, or just in your bed before you fall asleep, so today, we're going to chat about female southern authors. We thought we might inspire you on what your next pickup at either the library or on Audible or at the bookstore might be. So meet you at the table!  

 I'm Lainie.  And I'm Laura Beth. And we are Steel Magnolias .  The strength of steel,  With the grace of a magnolia. 

We're here to have uplifting conversations about life in the south.  And we've got plenty of room at our table. So pull up a chair.

Welcome back to the Steel Magnolias podcast. First off, I would like to thank our patrons that make it possible for us to now be well over 150 episodes into this podcast, we have a small but mighty group of monthly supporters. And we'd really like for you to check it out. If you haven't already, we offer all kinds of perks, including a bonus episode. And all of our memberships are $20 a month or less. So this podcast is free. But the perks and the extras are all available@patreon.com/Steel Magnolias. So please check that out. The link is going to be in the show notes. And I would like to give a special shout out and thank you to Jennifer of Gallatin, Tennessee who just crossed her one year anniversary of supporting us. So thank you.  Thank you, Jennifer. It's people like you that make this possible, because we do have some costs around all this fun stuff. For sure. Okay, well, it is Women's History Month, which is what first sort of put this in our mind in the month of March on the on the content calendar. But it's also turning into spring break and summer reading season. Yeah, very quickly.  So I just feel like it's a very timely topic to talk about some classics and some fun reads by Southern women. Yes. Um, sometime we're gonna do the southern male authors too. Oh, for sure. They'll get their own episode too. Yeah, but ladies first.  We could even do poets. I mean, there's just so many fun topics.

We could even do only modern day, Southern authors. Yeah, some of the authors we're going to be discussing are still living, but we could do like real modern day, you know, only ones that have published in the last 10 years or something, that would actually be really cool. So anyway, okay, let's see where we go today. Y'all know, we haven't looked at each other's notes or anything. Well, can I start by saying that I'm leery when we mentioned authors of any kind? Because I feel like I'm endorsing them and their storylines. But if y'all have been listening a while, and I think, you know, I'm super sensitive in different topics and storylines. Me too.In what I read, what I watch, things that I listen to, and intentionally don't watch and don't listen to.  A lot of even PG 13- I rate as R, that's just my barometer of content.  Not from a prudish standpoint, so much as it's from a I want to live a peaceful life standpoint, I think, right? I mean, that's what it is for me.

I don't watch Dateline, because i can’t. There are some storylines that I just don't want to know how wicked the heart can be.  And I have lines from interviews that I still can't get out of my head, things, just certain things just stick with me. And I think that's true of a lot of people. But I think a lot of people dismiss it, that it's normal. So I have recognized that it's not normal for me. And so I don't read a lot of content, including some of the stuff we're going to talk about today. I take a pass on, but I recognize the importance of it in the literary world. 

So, it reminds me of let's say a movie wins an Oscar. Yes. Okay. That doesn't mean that necessarily, it's going to be something we like the content of, but it does usually mean there's some sort of reason it excelled. Sure. So yeah, same with when book wins a Pulitzer Prize. Yeah. You don't have to like what the author is about. You don't have to like the content, but it does typically mean they've excelled in some way.  Yeah, According to some panel of judges, right, and I'm not on that panel, so I'm just commenting on some things some other people recognized. So, since you mentioned Pulitzer, maybe we should just start there. I didn’t  even realize there was so many categories of Pulitzer Prize winners- journalism, Arts, Letters, music.  I didn't either.  I just mostly think about the fiction and nonfiction.  

Well, if you are one that uses the resource Good Reads, goodreads.com, you can actually find a category of southern Pulitzer Prize winning authors, they're going to be grouped male and female together.  

That would have been nice for me to know, prepping for this as I went digging. Sorry,  I should have texted you. So, a lot of people use Goodreads. So if you want to even just source it through that, you can definitely do that the men and the women are there together. But it does kind of feel like we should maybe start with the author that has an enduring legacy, who penned the most popular American novel ever written. Miss Margaret Mitchell from Atlanta, Georgia. Yes. So, I just recently re listened to this book.  Gone With the Wind. We haven't even said the title. Yes, we just know. You finished it? Oh, I finished it. It's so fabulous. 50 hours-I gave it 50 hours.  But, in saying that it is fabulous, I feel like I need to preface: I am not one that wants the old south to be back. Yeah, in fact, if I had lived at that time, based on the family I came from, I would not have been living in a plantation home. Anyway. So I'm not wishing for that. Right. I'm very uncomfortable with any book that uses the N word on the race issue. However, it is both black and white characters that use it in this book, and it's so weird to me. Yes. Because I don't hear it often. Except maybe in a rap song now. Yeah. Which we listen to a lot of, If you know us, well, you know that- ha ha. That makes me really uncomfortable. Yeah. However, the themes of this book, the survival and perseverance themes, the love and relationships and figuring out even sometimes too late, right? Yeah. All those storylines are so fabulous. The character development to me is so good in this book in so many different characters. The importance of land and your roots, just all of those themes make me love this book.  And like you said, they are timeless. We're all kind of still thinking about that today.  Well, and it was interesting, the theme of war really had me thinking about the day and age we're in. Some people make it seem more glorious. But it is a horrific thing.  And so, yeah, the themes are timeless. I love it.

So it was published in 1936. And it quickly became a bestseller it won the 1937 Pulitzer Prize. And in 1939 it was made in to the film and we did a whole episode on Gone With the Wind. I think it was season one, probably that was during the time in our content, where we were pairing a lot of topics together. We thought we needed more than one topic, live and learn. So I'm not even sure if we felt like we gave it the full extent of what it is that we wanted. But I do remember and I'll link to that in our show notes. If you want to go back and listen to it.  Well, I think it's 1000 pages so it's gonna be a doozy to dive into but man, is it good?  All right. Gone With the Wind. 

What else won the Pulitzer Prize?

Well, in 1939, Marjorie Rawlings, won for The Yearling.Sh lived in Florida most of her life, if not all of her life. And The Yearling was also made into a movie. So some of you may be remembering, I believe it was Gregory Peck was in that movie.  Really? Okay. Anyhow, themes of this book would be like a young boy coming of age. Family themes. Definitely a lot of themes of man in the natural world, some hunting and different things like that. I believe this book is on some middle school/high school reading lists. But I would recommend this book I started reading it haven't finished it. So maybe there's something in there that I'm gonna go ewww. 

Okay, well coming of age is a red flag in any description for me…maybe at a coming of age boy or girl story. It just has a theme that reminds me that I'm like, I don't want to be reading about this. So isn't that that's in a lot of descriptions of some classics. People love a coming of age story.  Those shifts in your innocence and all of that. 

What have you got next?

Um, let's see, I don't really have any particular order going in. Maybe we need to mention, Eudora Welty. Okay, go there. So The Optimist’s Daughter- is the story of Laurel McKelva Hand, who is a young woman who has left the South and returns years later to New Orleans. Everybody loves a good setting in New Orleans, right? Where her father is dying. And after his death, and after her father's death, she goes with her stepmother back to the very small town where she grew up, and she starts to understand her past, herself, her parents.

It's a lot about grieving, expressions of grief and loss. And

yeah, so I haven't read this one. But I do think that sounds good. Yeah, I like anybody's exploration, like you were saying about Gone With the Wind, of their roots. Yeah, it's just a nice journey, because I think a lot of us see ourselves in some piece of it. Yeah. And as I'll mention later on, Eudora Welty is a favorite of other southern authors. Oh, for sure. And so thinking like okay, your radar should be going off that she's one to be considering a read from.

She was born and died in Jackson, Mississippi. So we've talked before about Mississippi having so many good authors, and storytellers. I deemed it the storyteller state, you know. That's a good one. 

Well, we can't go much longer without talking about Harper Lee. Yes, To Kill A Mockingbird, won the Pulitzer Prize in 1961. She was an Alabama native and I believe lived there her whole life. But what a great great story of justice and courage, bravery, racial prejudice. Lots of things, topics covered in themes covered in that book.  This is still at the top of most public high school reading lists- it is a classic. And it too, turned into a feature film starring Gregory Peck. That's not who you were thinking of? No, I mean, he was a big actor at that point. Yeah, and Robert Duvall, who took on the role of the mysterious, Boo Radley. That's right. So yeah, that one is a classic. And synonymous with Harper Lee. Some of these other authors went on to have larger catalogs. We're really focusing on the ones that they won a Pulitzer Prize for. She was a very dear close friend of Truman Capote, who we will have to include in our men's episode as well. 

But yeah, let's talk Alice Walker. Born in Eatonton, Georgia, she won the 1983 Pulitzer Prize for The Color Purple.

So the interesting piece about this novel is that she wrote it in African American Southern Vernacular English, which had never happened before for an entire novel. I'm sure there had been essays or articles and things that had been written in that language. And it's all written as letters to God, which is a very interesting format. I mean, you can sense the pouring out of your heart. Yeah, in these letters. It documents very traumatic thing. The themes of this one make me squirm. But again, teenagers in traumatic situations that they of course should never have to face. Racism,sexism, violence.  It's definitely focused on the two sisters and their relationship, parallels that they have in their lives, and they both encountered horrible difficulties.  I think another theme of this is just the power of your voice. How, she’s still alive, right? Yes, I believe. 78 years old.

She was born in where, Alabama?  Eatonton, Georgia. Georgia excuse me, she's now in Northern California. So again, this one's on a lot of reading lists. If it were up to me, I wouldn't have my high schooler reading this. There's too many other good classics.

Yeah, in fact, I went to see this movie with a friend of mine, and she brought her family and I was squirming during some of it. Yeah, I didn’t know that some of the themes that were in it, were gonna be in it.  That's hard. Because when people hear classic, or they've heard a name, or a title, whether it be for a book or a film, you feel like it's safe. In the sense of not going into deep waters like that. And yeah, I'm sure they had to have some conversations after the movie.  So that was that was a pretty big film for Oprah Winfrey. Oh, for sure. Acting career.  We’ve covered the color purple on a previous episode too, because I'm remembering us now talking about Fathom Events put it out on its anniversary. Yeah, yeah. Okay. That's why. So, Alice Walker- The Color Purple.

Who else? I don't think I have any other Pulitzer Prize winners.

There's a lot more Pulitzer Prize winning men. Yeah. Author, Southern men authors.

I do have a couple more like, that I wanted to discuss that are deep and unusual. Okay. Can we go there? Yeah. So one of the most famous Southern authors, female authors is Flannery O'Connor. Yes. Born in Savannah, Georgia died in Milledgeville, Georgia. And she is known as using the Southern Gothic style writing. Okay, so let me go ahead and just say, I want to get Flannery O'Connor, because there are so many people that I love and respect, authors and other public figures that like her.  She's a devout Catholic. I know that plays into her writing and themes and the themes that she writes about or what she did write about, she has passed away.  She only lived to 39. She had lupus. Wow. Okay. She wrote two novels and 32 short stories. So she she lived from 1925 to 1964. So that's an interesting time to be alive. Yes. But her characters are grotesque. They are in violent situations. This is why we have a hard time she questions ethics and morals a lot or she's trying to have the reader question, ethics and morals, which I think is part of Catholic, devout upbringing. And that plays into some of these themes. Destiny, freewill, things like that, moral decay. I love moral discussions. Yeah, it's the manner in which she paints it that I really have a hard time with. Now there is a great local bookstore here in Franklin, that has awesome southern authors and great highlights for locals sections, local writers. They have a quote from Flannery, okay. And again, she's highly esteemed. So that's why I'm like, I want to get her. So here's the Flannery O'Connor quote: “Whenever I'm asked why southern writers particularly have a penchant for writing about freaks. I say it's because we are still able to recognize one.”  Whoa, now that is fascinating.

So what yeah, what does that say to you? What is how does that sit with you?  This is what I this is how it sits with me. We still have a plumb line of what is socially acceptable. Yeah. Whether or not that's right, sure. But we have a we have a measure on what is socially acceptable. And if it's outside of that, we raise an eyebrow. Whereas in some places literally anything goes and you're frowned upon for raising an eyebrow.You're the bad guy.  The lane has widened to that's all socially acceptable.That’s what I think that means. I do too. And I don't believe with her Catholic upbringing and knowing that that's important to her that she is literally esteeming these behaviors. I think she's wanting to just get discussion around these things, to point them out.  Yet we have a hard time with her, both of us separately.  So, A Good Man is Hard to Find, written in 1955. That's a big one. That's a short story.

And doesn't that title draw you in?  Yes!  This is going to be all about how to be a good southern gentleman. Oh, no. No. So I don't want to we've talked about it. Oh, or was that on a bonus episode just for our patrons. I don't know if we talked about that publicly on here or not.  Another famous one that I was familiar with was the violent buried away, okay, which comes straight from a scripture out of Matthew. Okay. And it has a lot to do with, you know, religious themes, violence, etc. She's an unusual writer, but has to be mentioned. I still want to get it, but I just kind of don’t.  We're gonna get messages on that one, and that is fine. Well, you may just be smarter than me. Maybe that's what it is. Help me understand.  You have a literary lens that I don't and that's fine. 

Okay, Zora Neale Hurston Did you look into her at all? A little?

Yeah, she's since passed. She was 1891 to 1960.

So she was born in Alabama, died in Florida. And she had a 1937 novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God, that was quite renowned as well.  So all four of her grandparents had been born into slavery. As I mentioned, she was born in 1891. So I mean, that alone, sets up an author to bring a perspective that is raw, it's heart wrenching.  And yeah, what that would do to your psyche, I don't even know. But she was an anthropologist, which, you know, just means she loved that study of culture, and the impact that it's having, through different ways. But her father was a Baptist preacher and sharecropper who later became a carpenter. And her mother was a schoolteacher. I bet her mom and dad were very shaping of her and their community, for sure. Because they had both of those jobs. They had roles where they shaped where they were and speaking to the those around them.

Well, obviously, that book's gonna deal a lot with race and racism, judgment, jealousy, love and desire.

Yeah, they have she has some of that vernacular in there in bits and pieces. So like in The Color Purple. Yeah. Yeah. Like, I pulled a little, quote, two things. Everybody's got to do for they selves, they got to go to God. And they got to find out about living for they selves. Okay. Sorry, that took me a long time because we're not used to reading like that like that. That rhythm is a little difficult. But yeah, that search for unconditional love. That only comes from God. Hope she lands on that. That's the only place you get that. I do too.

Anyhow, animals are a close second to me. Yeah.

I have a friend of mine, who is a huge Lee Smith fan. So I want to mention her. Yes, let’s go into some lighter, fun authors. We're gonna transition from the heavy.  

So Lee Smith, is still alive. And this is this is from my friend Lindsey, who lives in Charleston. She said the thing that sticks out most about Lee Smith is her authentic Appalachian voice, the way she's able to capture the true dialect of someone, like say my grandmother, in the written form. I can hear her talking, by the way she writes.  That is so precious. It's received well from the community when you've been in the community. Yeah. And you're not writing about it. Exactly. You're not reporting on it, you’re in it. Yes. And she is from a small coal mining town. 

So, she also says that what she loves about Lee Smith is the way she uses women's lives and tells the story of our ancestors through their eyes. She said it's been a really long time, but she read Oral History two different times, and absolutely loved it. She went on to read Fair and Tender Ladies, after that. I want to read that, it is written in letter style. I think I would love it. It covers a broad span, I want to say like, World War One or Two through Vietnam.  Okay. I was gonna say about 40 years. So yeah, so she was dating a guy. This is again, still my friend, talking about how much she loved Lee Smith. She was dating a guy when she was in college. And he was going to Appalachian State, in Boone North Carolina. And they made the entering freshmen class read Oral History, by Lee Smith as an introduction to the area. That's cool. So students that were coming from outside of Appalachia had a true flavor of the people that lived there. That was really good. And so anyway, that's actually how my friend Lindsey heard about Lee Smith was this guy she was dating had to go read Oral History, and that was her introduction. But, she's she's got several different titles. She has a book that looks interesting to me, called The Last Girls. Anyhow, it's these girls have in high school gone down the Mississippi River. Yes. And then later have a reunion and go down the Mississippi River, I think on a cruise. That sounded cute to me. That does sound cute. 

Okay, Patricia Neal. Anyone? Oh, go there, aka Fannie Flagg, right. Sorry. I thought that's where you were about to go. I was just gonna say one of our favorites and prior guest on the show.  What an honor that was! We did get to interview her and so I'm definitely gonna link to that in our show notes. If you're a Fannie Flagg fan. She is still living, of course-77, I think.  So in Birmingham, she calls Birmingham home. She's

now in California as well, she splits her time.  Early in her career, though. She was known as an actress and a comedian. Oh, for a long time. So in 1987, she published, Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe, which remained on the New York Times bestseller for 36 weeks. I've read several of hers. I really liked a book called Standing in the Rainbow. But she has dyslexia.  She mentioned that when we talked to her and that's just interesting to me for a writer to overcome.

So she told us again, I'll link to the show notes if you want to hear our full interview with her. But she came as a young girl to the Santa Barbara writer's conference because her idol, Eudora Welty was going to be there. Yeah, so we mentioned Eudora earlier. And they were assigned to write a short story while there. And the theme had to be childhood. So she sat there a little nervous because she has dyslexia. She's writing out her story, which actually was Daisy Fay and the Miracle Man. And she decides, I will write it as if this is a sixth grader writing because that way, they won't notice and it would make sense for there to be mistakes. Well, here comes Eudora Welty announcing her as the winner of the short story. And I guess you'd say the rest is history. So, she’s been acknowledged in lots of different realms- in 2012, she won the Harper Lee Award for Distinguished Alabama author of the year. And then this is kind of unique, I would think for a writer.  She got an Academy Award and Writers Guild Award for Best Adapted Screenplay.  I love it when the author of a book writes the screenplay. It's the closest you're gonna get to the film actually resembling the book.  Well, I love that it's almost like an insider sort of thing to know, she uses a lot of her characters in other novels, not in their entirety. But she would just have them if they've been a main character in one book, they're a side character in another. It's just fun to notice that.  And I bet you they are based on people that she really knew. But you might be reading one of her novels and go, neighbor Dorothy? Isn't that the woman that had the radio show in Standing in the Rainbow? So it's just fun. It almost feels like a little inside secret. If you know, you know. So yeah, I definitely love Fannie Flagg and have read several of hers that are they are fun and light reads. Great for the beach. 

I read one that I think would be great for the beach recently. Different author, that one of our listeners told me about. Beth Hoffman.  The one I read was, Saving CC Honeycutt. And it takes place mostly in Savannah, Georgia. Adorable little read. That's a great title- Saving CC Honeycutt. So check that one out. Laura Beth, I think you would like it. It is cute. And it's mostly light. There's a couple of things. Maybe if you're listening in the car you wouldn't want your kid to hear but not totally inappropriate. But yeah, might make you squirm a little. Yeah. 

You know, another book I really enjoyed that I wanted to mention on here because it's newer, is Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens. And it takes place in the Louisiana swamp.  Yeah. But very interesting read and there will be a movie of this coming out July 22, 2022. Okay, cool. You might want to read it before the movie. She had all the particulars of the wildlife in that book, because she is a zoologist. And I love that she's 72 years old and that was her first novel. So, there's hope for me.  I know I loved the quote, I recently saw that said something to the effect of “Don't Ask somebody that's made it in a top 40 under 40 list how they got their start, talk to a 70 year old bestseller that had their first novel”, you know, so good. So that is fun.  All the generations need each other. We need to pick each other's brains. 

But what I did hear from this list is almost all of these have been turned into films. That's so interesting. So that is, almost like an easy script. If it's a best selling book, then I bet it'll do well at the box office. But that doesn't mean that phrase doesn't even really apply anymore. So weird. Well, almost always. The book is better. Oh, for sure. I mean, yeah, almost always. Some of them get pretty close. Yeah. But the books always better. And I think that goes to you, you the reader get to make the character as you want. And when that doesn't match up to what you see on the screen, there's a disconnect because you've already walked the whole journey with this character. And here they are looking different or acting different.   I'll tell you something else that really affects me, maybe this is an immature thing. But I think one of the reasons I really love British and Irish movies is I don't know those actors. Yeah. So I don't have a preconceived idea of them. You know if it's Jennifer Aniston, I have my own thoughts of what she's like. That could be good or bad. But if it's this, yeah, random lady that looks pretty normal. She's a little pudgy and doesn't have perfect teeth. Like this is somebody that I actually might know. Yes. Unlike the Hollywood beauty. Yes. Does that make sense? Totally makes sense. I think that's why books also you can have them the way you want.

Exactly. That makes sense. This was fun. It was fun. So we wish you all happy reading. And Lainie, Peace be with you.

And also with y’all!