Taking the girl out of the South, keeping the South in the girl

Vital markers of Southerness stick with these Black women who have left home  

Forever a Southerner: No matter where you find yourself in the world, or for how long, home stays with you.  image credit: Shutterstock

Whether you’ve never left home, eagerly left your hometown behind or reluctantly relocated because of an amazing opportunity, the place where you spent your formative years shapes who you are. You always carry it with you. Gabrilla Ballard and Lynn Pitts are natives of the South. Growing up in New Orleans and Houma, La., respectively, they both left Louisiana some 20 years ago. Having put down roots in the northeast, Ballard and Pitts still have moments when they’re reminded, though they took themselves out of the South, Southernness has not departed from their DNA.  

“[E]ven in a place that arguably has less, there is a tremendous amount of generosity in the way people show up for each other.” This will always be a part of Southern culture she most appreciates and will replicate in her own way of being, regardless of where she lives.

To Love Family is to Feed Them 

One of the quintessential markers of Southern culture is the importance of family. This is common in many other cultures. However, the value of family often shows up in the South as placing physical proximity high on the priority list. “I had an uncle who married a woman from a town about 20 minutes away from where we lived,” Pitts recalls. Her uncle’s wife was concerned about the house he wanted to purchase a few years into their marriage. The problem? It wasn’t close enough to her mother. It would have taken about 15 minutes to drive to her childhood home; yet this woman couldn't fathom being that far away. 

Pitts comes from a very big family. Her maternal grandmother had 11 children. All but two spent their entire lives in and around Houma. She is an only child but grew up surrounded by cousins, aunts, uncles and a best friend who lived across the street. Having such a full and committed village came with many benefits. The one that remains a core part of her identity is the instinct to gather those she loves and feed them. When every holiday and many weekends are marked by a big feast during your youth, you don’t shake that off when you’re an adult. 

“It took me years to train myself to not cook for 30 people,” Pitts laughs. Having settled in New York City, she took her upbringing as a proper hostess North with her. Whenever the occasion calls for it, Pitts invites friends to her apartment. It’s blasphemy in South Louisiana to have even one guest in your home without offering them food. Subsequently, an informal hang to chill and watch Netflix at Pitts’ place can easily come with a three-course meal served on her good dinnerware with cloth napkins. 

She will likely apologize if the dessert is store-bought. 

We are warm; we are audacious 

“I miss people greeting each other.” This is Ballard’s immediate response when asked what she misses most about New Orleans. The way New Orleanians not only speak to each other, no matter the venue or time of day, but the tendency for the “Good morning! How you doin’” to turn into a five-minute conversation about a stranger’s love life, work shenanigans or unruly children. There’s a warmth Ballard associates with her hometown. She’s lived in California and now in Western Massachusetts. She’s yet to find such warmth replicated anywhere else. 

It’s the sincerity in her voice when she asks someone how they’re doing that’s identified her as a Southerner much of her life, even though she left New Orleans in her early 20s. Deeply connected to Black Southern culture, specifically, Ballard still finds herself surprised when even Black folk in New England are cold and stand offish. It’s jarring for her to come across another Black face while running around town and not be greeted with an enthusiastic hello. An extended smile held more in the eyes than in the lips.  

This is one of the ways she’s learned what it means to be from the South. By leaving it, she’s been able to notice people’s reaction to the way she shows up in the world. “There’s an audacity we have that’s implicit,” Ballard states. Southern women, specifically those from New Orleans, walk into any space like they belong there. Because they truly believe they, most certainly, do belong everywhere. As a young adult in Oakland, Ballard encountered fellow artists who could immediately sense she wasn’t from the West Coast and was probably from somewhere in the South. For years, she still spoke with that distinct New Orleans accent. So if her voice didn’t give it away, her boldness and confidence let Californians know she was not one of them. 

Forever a Southerner 

Both women visit home frequently. Pitts recently returned from a five-month stint in Houma, where she helped care for a sick elder. Ballard’s mother still owns a home in New Orleans and much of her extended family live in the greater New Orleans region. Their connection to their roots remains strong, even though neither envisions permanently living in Louisiana again. 

According to Pitts, “even in a place that arguably has less, there is a tremendous amount of generosity in the way people show up for each other.” This will always be a part of Southern culture she most appreciates and will replicate in her own way of being, regardless of where she lives. For Ballard, she now understands just how much Southernness has shaped her. She’s always been proud of being from New Orleans. Now after an entire adulthood spent elsewhere, she realizes how much she is of New Orleans.