Missed Generation: Claiming My Mississippi Heritage Paperback - 2008

From the publisher

Can heritage slipped sideways through a closing door be rightfully claimed? This memoir explores possible answers when the author, after many years abroad, marries a longtime native of Mississippi and returns to the home of her ancestors. In 1981 the author settled in South Mississippi on her husband's tree farm. Over 100 years earlier, her maternal great-grandmother-tragically widowed on her wedding day-left Mississippi for North Carolina. Although she remarried, her children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren were long-removed from their heritage in the Magnolia state. The author's fortuitous marriage and relocation brought her back to the doorstep of this heritage, though for many years she did not claim it. Missed Generation describes a Mississippi most Americans do not know; one that is far-removed from slaves, cotton and Delta plantations. Much of the state's history concerns the original settlers-English, Scots and Irish-who left the Southern Piedmont to settle in Mississippi and whose traditions explain much of the state's culture. Walker Percy, after all, claimed that it is questionable that Mississippians are very different from other Americans. This memoir focuses on the lives of those independent, egalitarian, and proud rural inhabitants who were far more influential than, in the words of one southern historian, the Natchez baronial planters. It is their heritage the author now claims. ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Giulia L. Saucier is a graduate of Florida State University, Smith College, and the University of Southern Mississippi, where she earned her PhD. A former teacher and educational administrator, her lifelong fascination with other languages and cultures began at theage of four when she moved with her family to San Juan, Puerto Rico. She has taught in Rome, Italy and Thessaloniki, Greece. Now retired, she lives in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, with her husband whose French ancestors arrived to settle on the Mississippi Gulf Coast in 1699.