Bailey White
In Mama Makes Up Her Mind and Other Dangers of Southern Living, Sleeping at the Starlite Motel and Other Adventures on the Way Back Home, and Quite a Year for Plums, author Bailey White offers readers an inviting refuge from our increasingly fast-paced society. Using humor, White transports the reader to the rural South, where the setting, the way of life, and the characters the reader meets contrast strikingly with life in the typical Northern city. Bailey White's South has a warm and hospitable atmosphere, a pleasant alternative to cold, bustling, Northern metropolitan centers. As a cousin of the Whites puts it when she calls from Philadelphia to announce she'll be visiting overnight, "'I've heard so much about Southern hospitality. Now I will be able to experience it for myself'" (Mama, 48). The language in Bailey White's writings also delights, especially her characters' manner of speaking, which contains many curious Southern expressions. My friends certainly would not say "persnickety" (Sleeping, 125), "doodlebugs" (Sleeping, 9), "junkets" (Mama, 60), describe a club as a "tough juke joint" (Mama, 3), or say, "'She sho' ain't gon' ride no ferry here'" (Mama, 62)!
How do you manage it?' 'Intersection of 93 and Baggs Road,' recites Mama. It is not surprising, then, when Bailey says, "Over the generations my family has metastasized from that hill to lower spots all over the county. And just at dawn, if I went out to the edge of the pasture and listened very carefully I could barely hear her singing 'Meet Me in St. Later Meade brings up a house she particularly liked, explaining, "No pretension there" (Plums, 159). Bailey took time to listen to old Mrs. The comical scenes from the small town of Thomasville will not only produce laughter, but a longing to move to such a quaint village. Mama, whether camping or not, can get fast-food for dinner, Southern-style: road kill. The rest of the characters frequently garden, all own Peterson Field Guide's (160), and are vehemently opposed to environmentally unfriendly techniques like slash-and-burning (158-9). The average workweek is 49 hours, and many so-called successful lawyers, doctors, and businessmen frequently work ten, twenty, or even thirty hours more.
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Acceptance Essays
