Southern Discomfort: A Memoir

by Tena Clark Narrated by Tena Clark

Overview

“Southern Discomfort is a raw, thought-provoking examination of privilege, racism, sexism, the masks we wear to conform to society's expectations, and the journey toward authentic identity.” -Read with Us: Caste, An Oprah's Book Club Discussion Guide

For fans of beloved memoirs like Educated and The Glass Castle, a “raw and deeply honest” (Publishers Weekly, starred review) true story set in rural Mississippi during the Civil Rights era about a white girl coming of age in a repressive society and the woman who gave her the strength to forge her own path-the black nanny who cared for her.

In her memoir that is a “story of love and fury” (Jackson Clarion-Ledger), Grammy Award-winning songwriter and producer Tena Clark recounts her chaotic childhood in a time fraught with racial and social tension. Tena was born in 1953 in a tiny Mississippi town close to the Alabama border, where the legacy of slavery and racial injustice still permeated every aspect of life. On the outside, Tena's childhood looked like a fairytale. Her father was one of the richest men in the state; her mother was a regal beauty. The family lived on a sprawling farm and had the only swimming pool in town; Tena was given her first car-a royal blue Camaro-at twelve.

But behind closed doors, Tena's family life was deeply lonely and dysfunctional. By the time she was three, her parents' marriage had dissolved into a swamp of alcohol, rampant infidelity, and guns. Adding to the turmoil, Tena understood from a very young age that she was different from her three older sisters, all of whom had been beauty queens and majorettes. Tena knew she didn't want to be a majorette-she wanted to marry one.

On Tena's tenth birthday, her mother, emboldened by alcoholism and enraged by her husband's incessant cheating, walked out for good, instantly becoming an outcast in their society. Tena was left in the care of her nanny, Virgie, even though she was raising nine of her own children and was not allowed to eat from the family's plates or use their bathroom. It was Virgie's acceptance and unconditional love that gave Tena the courage to stand up to her domineering father, the faith to believe in her mother's love, and the strength to be her true self.

Combining the spirit of brave coming-of-age memoirs such as The Glass Castle and vivid, evocative Southern fiction like To Kill a Mockingbird, Southern Discomfort is “an unforgettable southern story... [that] sings brightly to the incredible strength of family ties and the great power of love” (The Atlanta Journal-Constitution) and is destined to become a new classic.

Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly

★ 09/24/2018
Clark paints a raw and deeply honest picture of her childhood in 1950s and ’60s Mississippi. Clark, who is white, writes movingly of her black maid and stand-in mother, Virgie, who was not allowed to eat in her kitchen or white restaurants; of her mother’s forced stay at a barbaric mental hospital, at the insistence of her father; of her father’s casual and continued cruelty toward her sister, Toni (he hit her when she was a child and insulted her weight gain as an adult); and, ultimately, of the forces that helped Clark to leave her hometown for the Univ. of Southern Mississippi to pursue a career in music and the short-lived relationship that resulted in her daughter, Cody. What Clark shows so beautifully is that the people she discusses, as unredeemable as they may at first seem, are much more complex: her father, never one to shy away from using racial epithets, secretly helped build the local black church; her alcoholic mother, trying to deal with her husband’s many affairs, eventually stood up to him; and Clark herself realized at the age of six that she was gay, but she still dressed up like a conventional Southern belle. Clark’s narrative draws the reader in to a wonderful story of the South going from old to new. Agent: Brettne Bloom, Book Group. (Oct.)

Atlanta Journal-Constitution

What makes Southern Discomfort especially fine is Clark’s first-rate, efficient writing and swift, captivating storytelling. . .an unforgettable southern story...Southern Discomfort ultimately proves to be hugely satisfying comfort food. It sings brightly to the incredible strength of family ties and the great power of love.

Norman Lear

"Tena Clark’s astounding memoir engaged me so deeply that I felt the pain of a lonely child in a chaotic home, and, happily at the end, the exhilaration of her hard won freedom. A wonderful read."

Maria Shriver

Tena Clark is a pioneering force of nature, and her story is as powerful, riveting, and inspiring as she is. Do yourself a favor. Get comfortable and start reading.

Sela Ward

"Tena Clark's riveting memoir shows us that even in the midst of fear, anger, and hate...tolerance, forgiveness, and love will rise. A triumphant journey and an inspiring read!"

Madison Smartt Bell

"Here is a slice of the late-twentieth century South that goes all the way to the bone, and that hurts a bit! – but it feels like it just got to be done. Southern Discomfort is a dysfunctional family romance with all the trimmings, and it will also tell you a thing or two about that time and that place that you didn’t already know."

New Orleans Review of Books

"A literary memoir, one that soars with the artistic flare of William Faulkner and Tennessee Williams on the complexities of the Southern family."

Debbie Allen

"Tena Clark's memoir SOUTHERN DISCOMFORT, a true coming of age story, reads like a Tennessee Williams play. Set in the deep south where Magnolias, catfish, the Bible, guns, alcohol, racism and carnal knowledge collide, Tena's story confronts the heartbeat of America's identity crisis. A crisis of faith, family, freedom and truth. This story will make you laugh out loud, cry, and hope that one day you can stand as tall as Tena."

Jackson Clarion-Ledger

Clark tells this story of love and fury with humor and no self-pity. There are tales so wild, if they were in a novel, they would strain belief. But Southern Discomfort has an almost rollicking tone. No matter how hair-raising the event, I never really feared for the author, never doubted that wit and gumption would get her out.

Jill Conner Browne

"Tena Clark weaves her deeply personal, private struggles together with the painful, shameful struggles she witnessed in Mississippi during the Civil Rights era in her beautiful, bravely shared memoir."

Bill Clegg

"Powerful, upsetting, and deeply hopeful, Tena Clark’s SOUTHERN DISCOMFORT is the brutal and true story of a family coming apart in a fracturing South told from the point of a view of a girl who makes peace with what she survived, fled and eventually came home to. A brave, wildly engrossing memoir."

Atlanta Journal-Constitution

What makes Southern Discomfort especially fine is Clark’s first-rate, efficient writing and swift, captivating storytelling. . .an unforgettable southern story...Southern Discomfort ultimately proves to be hugely satisfying comfort food. It sings brightly to the incredible strength of family ties and the great power of love.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940170809851
Publisher:	Simon & Schuster
Publication date:	10/02/2018
Edition description:	Unabridged

Read an Excerpt

Southern Discomfort
Where I grew up, girls like me knew our place. We were expected to smile politely and keep our white-gloved hands folded neatly in our laps when we sat in church. We spoke only when spoken to. We said: “Yes, sir,” and “No, thank you, ma’am,” and “Why yes, some sweet tea would be just fine.” Back talk was not an option. We did not ask: “Why?” We did not say: “That doesn’t seem fair.” We were expected to wear stiff, pressed dresses even under the blazing Mississippi sun, and to have perfectly curled hair and lightly powdered faces in the drenching humidity. As we grew up, we understood that stepping off the prescribed path in any way meant risking it all, and probably losing.

Where I’m from, men like my father—rich, Cadillac-driving, Klan-sympathizing men—made the money. Women like my mother—beautiful, charming, educated only in how to entertain—ran the houses. If these women had any dreams beyond tending to their husbands, babies, and barbeques, they kept those thoughts to themselves.

Black maids, like the two women who tended to me—first, Viola; then Virgie—raised the white children they cared for but were not allowed to sit at the family table, drink from the family’s cups, or ride in the front seat of their cars.

Black men and children were still called “boy,” as in “What are you starin’ at, boy?” And “nigger,” as in, “I’m gonna need a few more niggers to pick my pecans this year.” If you recoiled from the word, if it made your stomach clench and your insides boil, you were considered a “nigger lover,” a dangerous insult. And if word of your sympathies spread, your family feared waking in the middle of the night to a burning cross on the lawn, or a brick thrown through the dining room window during supper.

If your glamorous, tortured wife became an alcoholic, like my mother did, you sent her away to the state mental hospital in a straitjacket to dry out. If your husband was a notorious skirt-chaser, like my father was, you might pull your .38 Colt out at the dinner table and chase him around the house, threatening to kill him right then and there, but only after your dinner guests had left for the evening.

And if you were a lesbian, before you even knew there was a word for the feelings you had had for as long as you could remember, you suppressed this fundamental part of yourself for as long as you possibly could. You lived a lie. You kissed boys and wore their fraternity pins, curled your hair, entered beauty pageants, joined a sorority. You and your friends talked about wedding cakes, honeymoons, and how many babies you wanted, just like you were supposed to. Because that’s what good girls did.

Appearances mattered above all. “That’s just the way it is” and “Let it be” were common refrains.

* * *

Growing up in Waynesboro, Mississippi, in the heart of the Jim Crow Deep South, I never thought there was any other way than the way it had always been. No one I knew ever ventured farther north than Memphis or maybe Nashville, and that was just fine with them.

My roots ran deep into the red earth; the land felt as much a part of me as my limbs, my heart. I hated it with a fury. I loved it with an all-consuming passion. This is the great paradox of the South. It’s a savage place, a complicated place, and yet it still burrows into you, like the fangs of one of the water moccasins I used to hunt as a young girl down on the Chickasawhay River behind our farm. There’s venom in the soil. But there’s an alluring beauty in it as well.

For a time, I assumed I had no choice but to stay on the straight and narrow path that had been laid out for me since birth. I’d wear the pressed dresses, the curled hair, the pin. I’d hold my tongue. I’d mind my manners. I’d play the clarinet and the piano even though I longed to play the drums. I’d marry a man exactly like my father, even though I was attracted to girls from the time I was four or five, when I first laid eyes upon a majorette in her green sequined leotard and white tassled boots. I’d be a charming and gracious hostess. I’d have the children, the impeccable house. Maybe I’d even have the black maid to raise my children and a staff of black men to pick the pecans and cut the lawn. I’d pass out finger sandwiches and pour sweet tea. And the cycle would continue.

Or maybe I’d find out I was stronger than I thought I was. And the cycle—at least for me—would end.

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