In a mix of memoir and exploration on the craft of writing fiction, Eudora Welty reflects on her upbringing in Jackson, Mississippi, and how it shaped her personality as well as writing style. With family anecdotes and vivid descriptions of life during the Jim Crow era, Welty paints the picture of how writing is ultimately a mix of experience, memory, and imagination, allowing the reader to reflect on their own childhood and locate the root to one’s creative beginnings. This updated edition includes a new introduction by former U.S. poet laureate Natasha Trethewey, in which she describes the book as “a kind of primer for being a citizen of the world, for answering our own particular callings and joining the long conversation that is human history.”
