WEBVTT

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In some ways, I'm always going to be a Southern writer.

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I'm always going to be a Black writer

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because I am Southern and Black,

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and those are particular experiences.

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But the term can also be limiting,

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and I don't feel limited.

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I really don't think of myself

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specifically as a Southern writer,

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though I write about the South,

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and I write about the Black experience in the South.

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I'm writing from a Southern Black perspective

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because that's how I see the world,

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that's how I was trained to see the world, in a sense.

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That's the language that I speak, in a way,

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meaning that a little bit figuratively,

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but also quite literally, too.

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It's Southern American language.