As a transplant, I am still completely enraged by the knee-jerk statements people are willing to make about the South that they would not make about any other region of the country. I think about all the things I’ve found out since I’ve moved here, about Jewish families in Mobile before the Civil War and textile factories in eastern Alabama and western Georgia. Someone could write a whole novel about the military officer who fell in love with Zelda Fitzgerald and crashed a plane on her front yard, killing himself. My friends who couldn’t *imagine* doing a national job search lose out when they don’t find out about these histories. (And I would be saying this even if I hadn’t met my husband and baby daddy here.)

One thing people are willing to say about other regions: “People learn to fly through it. And then they go home.” I’m from another fly-over region, the Midwest. When I was younger and sillier, I would tell people I was from Chicago. I’m not from Chicago. I’m from a flat, soybean- and cardinal-studded landscape. Thank God for David Foster Wallace, the poet of central Illinois.

So, long story short, thanks for writing this.