Elizabeth Avery Thomas ponders her family legacy as a descendant of enslavers through a technique called speculative nonfiction. As she writes at the close of this piece, ‘In my current work, exploring Southern history through the lens of my family, the accepted “facts” I’ve inherited are self-justifying fictions. Since the lives of the non-literate Native and enslaved people in my family’s world are not directly documented, the truth of those lives is all too easily erased. Speculation and extrapolation are necessary tools to excavate what’s been hidden. In this piece, I start with two objects – a bell and a table – that were once in my family’s plantation house. Using them as anchors, I imagine the lives of those who controlled them and those who were controlled by them. In doing so, I hope to undermine the fictional histories we’ve been given and reveal some truths about the lives lived in the orbit of those objects.’
Click here to read Elizabeth’s piece, Southern Bells, in Speculative Nonfiction magazine.
A Southern Bell
Author: Elizabeth Avery Thomas has an MFA in creative writing from Columbia University, and has published both fiction and nonfiction. She is currently at work on His Father’s Son: William Holland Thomas, Yonaguska, and the Forgotten History of Cherokee Resistance on the Appalachian Frontier, a social biography of her second great grandfather who was adopted by a band of Cherokees and helped them evade the Trail of Tears. You can follow her blog here, Tangled Histories.
What a powerful investigation into words and silence. Thank you so much. This story has deeply penetrated my heart and will stay with me.
Thank you so much, it is beautifully written. The remark about the bell sounding limpid, and the sound of the whip not being heard, when the bell rang… Thank you. And I also liked, “not looking the cook in the eye, not seeing the sweat on her face…” (this is paraphrased.)