About

One of the definitions of diaspora is “any group that has been dispersed outside its traditional homeland.”

The authors of this blog were born in dire circumstances (economic, intellectual, spiritual, or otherwise) in various pockets of the South, haunted by the door-to-door Bible salesmen of Flannery O’Connor and the deaf mutes and rotting corpses of Faulkner’s best work.  Some of us were raised Southern Baptists and some of us were heathens among Southern Baptists.

Since then, we’ve traveled the world, read Great Books, met lots of interesting people, lived in places like San Francisco, New York, Paris and Melbourne, and made names for ourselves.

We have made important business presentations in skyscrapers in the great cities of the world as well as in front of Prime Ministers gathered at the United Nations. We have scuba dived with Presidents, had cocktails with celebrities.

We have then turned around and gone home on holidays to eat fried turkey, shoot assault rifles, and trade in conspiracy theories with relatives who we love dearly, and they love us, to everyone’s mutual frustration.

Even with all the reading, travel, and exposure to other cultures, our Southern identity is the driving characteristic of our psyches.

We are the redneck diaspora and we want to share our stories.  Like any diaspora, we feel both deeply connected to and conflicted about our ancestral homeland.  Some of these stories are funny, some are sad, and some are just plain pathetic.

We hope you enjoy them.