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alabama

I wasn’t born in Alabama. I didn’t, in fact, even live in Alabama for the first year of my life. I didn’t go to university in Alabama. I don’t live in Alabama now. I haven’t lived in Alabama for almost half of my life. Yet, when people now ask me “Where are you from?” my default response is “Alabama.”

Is it true?

I don’t know.

I have an uneasy relationship with the place. I know the north and the south of it, the urban and the rural, the rich and the poor, the old and the new, the good and the bad.

I am it and it is me. We are complex, difficult, challenging.

And, hopefully, full of surprises and change.

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fordlaceyblog

I was born in Texas, spent my first year on the Navajo Nation, grew up in Alabama, went to college in Florida, consider myself to be a Londoner and, now, after a five year stop over in Snowdonia (Cymru), live in Chester (England). I'm a restless soul who spends most of my time fretting about the state of the world. Other times I collaborate with my brother-from-another-mother on a fictionalised account of black and white, rich and poor, growing up in Alabama, the criminalisation of Black men, and the Alabama prison system. The work is in progress here at fordlacey.com

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