COVER STORY .

Gone South

Former CP contributor Nancy French took your advice. She went back home.


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Published: Oct 4, 2006

"I think they liked me better than a good toothache — a little," is how Nancy French describes the reaction to the 12 columns she wrote for CP in 2004 and '05. French, a native Tennessean (she moved back last winter) is a conservative Christian — hardly the usual profile of an alt-weekly columnist. CP caught up with our former maverick "Slant" contributor to talk about life in Columbia, Tenn., mule capital of the world, and her forthcoming collection of comic essays, A Red State of Mind: How A Catfish Queen Reject Became A Liberty Belle (Center Street).

City Paper: What are you doing these days?

Nancy French: I have a grassroots organization called Evangelicals for Mitt, trying to encourage and promote Gov. Mitt Romney of Massachusetts to become the next president. So I do that kind of on the side, but my main job is writing and just hanging out with the kids.

CP: How was moving back South after living in New York and Philadelphia?

NF: I feel like I'm not having a culture shock, but rather a kind of culture appreciation. I'm really thankful that you do what you want down here — people aren't making you recycle, there's very little political correctness ... I do occasionally miss Vietnam [the restaurant on 11th and Arch streets] — I miss things like that, and I literally cannot get pizza delivered to my house.

CP: The Northeastern idea of the South is of a very conformist, rigid place, but that's not how you talk about it at all.

NF: There's definitely a different perception. In the South, in terms of the laws, there's more freedom. ... When I went to Philadelphia, it wasn't a place with unbridled freedom because they expected me to conform to their standards. You live so close together, it's hard to avoid conflict, but in the South you can be kind of a rare bird ... You've got more room to live and you're not constantly in conflict with people. People aren't making you be what they are.

CP: Do you want liberals to read your book, too?

NF: I would love love love for liberals to read it — and not just for the sales! I feel like it's important to have diversity of opinion, intellectual diversity, just because that's the true form of diversity. ... I think it would help the dialogue, because it's so polarized.

CP: You make a lot of the red state/blue state divide. What about people who say those kinds of terms promote stereotypes?

NF: I think they're probably right, that it might solidify you into your camp, and promote a kind of club mentality. But the truth is the cultural differences are so profound that identifying that is not harmful but can allow people to work past it. People who say there aren't so many differences between Democrats and Republicans and red and blue, well, the differences are so vast that it's dishonest not to call it what it is.

(r_frankford@citypaper.net)