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.




















