私の出身であるバージニャ州の過激派Extremists in my hometown, central Virginia

I've always harbored mixed feelings about my hometown, Lynchburg, VA. Growing up there, I acquired a central Virginian accent, which all of my relatives on the west coast loved to tease whenever I visited. My California cousins liked to mimick me in high picthed voices, so I figured early on that I must come from some kind of hickville. "See y'awll later now ya hear," they'd sing when we parted. One year in highschool, my cousin from Oregon, Greg, informed that his name should be pronounced "Grehhg" - and not the two-syllabled "GRAY-egg" that was more to my liking. Even my mom and dad (also from the west coast) used to giggle when I would call to my friends: "Hey YAWLL, waitup," I used to yell from the kitchen door when it was tahm to play. When I asked Mom and Dad "Wa-uht? Why'r ya laughin,'" they told me playfully "We sure are raising a true southern bell!" (Like, what was that supposed to mean anyway?)

My brother went to Harvard when I was 15, and then I had the good fortune to go to Spain and France that year. Annual trips to San Francisco and Oregon, visits to big brother in Boston, and a short vacation in Europe - these little excursions started to have an effect on me. For better or worse, by the time I graduated from high school, I had gained some type of comparative "world" view - and it had become stark clear to me that I was, indeed, from a small, backwater town - and in danger of becumin a hick. To make matters worse, I came from the home of The Moral Majority, Jerry Falwell, and spiritual salvation. In those days, I was definitely destined for hell 'cause I'd never been saved. (My Filipina mother had baptized me Catholic.)

Where I come from, interracial dating was politically incorrect, and the notion of "diversity" had something to do with trying out new partners at line dancing on Friday night.

When I was 18, I went back to Europe for a year abroad, and people in Europe called me a Yankee. I was so confused; I didn't know if I should jump with glee, shout slanderous epithets at them, or just give them a proper learnin about the War of Norther Agression. I usually just kept quiet - actually enjoying the idea that someone might associate me with those so-called liberal and cosmopolitan northern yanks. Somehow, somewhere, by the time I went to college, I knew that my neighbor's life-sized portrait of General Lee in the parlor was surely ....a regional distinction. I aimed to become an educated, sophisticated, and liberated, modern woman. From then on, I would keep it under wraps that we got time off in high school for the first day of hunting season - and that on any band field trip, my classmates hung the rebel flag at the back of the bus. From then on, going to Europe would be "in," and gun racks would be "out."

It's true, I was embarassed of my southern roots for quite some time. After college (public school in Virginia), my aim was to get 'the hell outta Dodge.' Not wanting to be associated with the gunrack guys, I moved first to Japan, then to Philly, to Boston, to Los Angeles, and then back to Japan again (where I am stuck now). Anywhere but the south... doing anything but acting like a redneck. That was my destination... and to some extent perhaps, still is now.

The days of embarassment are pretty much over. In fact, when I went back home to see my parents this summer, for the first time I truly enjoyed eating at the Cracker Barrel for brunch, hiking in the Blue Ridge mountains with my dad, and listening to the sweet rythms of a dying local accent. This place, Lynchburg, has flavor, I thought. I went down to the James River to take pictures of the old brick warehouses, some of the orginal cobble streets, and the porticoed Jeffersonian-fashioned houses. However checkered it was, the short history of that little backwater town was clearly as rich and thick as the kudzu growing on every corner.

To be continued...