Читать книгу Constructing the Self. Essays on Southern Life-Writing онлайн

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In 2003, I still resided in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. I had no way of knowing when any particular relative got their hands on a copy of Summer Snow and read it—unless they let me know. Well, apparently some of Aun Sis’s folks read that essay. And they were not happy. Now, they didn’t tell me that they were unhappy; they just conveyed that to my relatives in Tuscaloosa. This went on for years. In fact, I only found out on a trip home to Tuscaloosa. The general feedback was that Aun Sis’s descendants, that is, her three remaining daughters and lots of grandkids, did not like how I had portrayed Aun Sis. Initially, I was genuinely puzzled. What had I done wrong? Was there some innate sense of violation of privacy? Did they not like how I had described her physically?—but she DID look like that. Did they not like the traits I had assigned to her?—which were all true. Did they not like the fact that the narrator was laughing slightly on occasion? Or, did they just not like the fact that any member of their family could be portrayed in a book, no matter how she was portrayed?