Hello folks,
Though I am currently off the grid until June 30th, I am thrilled to drop in with a special podcast episode with South Carolina author Mindy Friddle, whose newest book, Her Best Self, released just last week.
One thing I have learned in studying the South is that it’s always changing, always becoming. It travels across time, evoking both past and future all at once. I’ve spent a lot of time in small Southern towns the last few years, and I often feel there is no better setting through which to explore this strange sense of temporality we have here, and as well, to explore what it means to people to be a southerner. As I always say, the south is not a monolith; there are as many different types of southerners as there are landscapes here—and trust me, there are plenty.
Today’s conversation has me thinking about what it means to be a Southern woman. Growing up, my idea of womanhood here was to be tough and biting, to be bold and feisty, to take no shit from anyone and especially not from a man. This is one version of the southern woman; other versions paint her as meek and soft spoken, gentle and kind. Still others paint her as the wife, the mother, the caretaker. In this conversation with Mindy, we explore the changing role of the Southern woman, the expectations a place can subscribe unto a person, and the way community is built both within and beyond a region.
Mindy Friddle is author of the recently released novel Her Best Self, as well as Secret Keepers (winner of the Willie Morris Award for Southern Fiction). The Garden Angel, her first novel and SIBA bestseller was selected for Barnes & Noble’s Discover Great New Writers. The South Carolina Arts Commission awarded Mindy a prose fellowship, and she has twice won the state’s Fiction Prize. Her stories and essays have appeared in numerous journals. She holds an MFA from Warren Wilson and lives on Edisto Island, South Carolina—a place our regular listeners will know is close to my own heart, being just South of Charleston, a city I’ve grown to call home over the last decade.
I hope you enjoy this conversation. Thanks as well for bearing with our pause these last few months; it’s great to be back with you.
POD 30: Mindy Friddle