Orality and Other Southern Aspects in ZZ Packer's Short Stories

Abstract

"Maybe stories are my time and place, Mom. You know. My time and place to say things l need to say ...The entire affair's symbolic. Heavy with meaning not weight. You know. Like metaphors. Like words interchanged as if they have no weight or too much weight, as if words are never required to bear more than they can stand. As if words, when we're finished mucking with them, go back to just being words" (John Edgar Wideman's "Weight," 2000).