Southern Discomfort: A Memoir

By Tena Clark

‘Where I grew up, girls like me knew our place ... we understood that stepping off the prescribed path in any way meant risking it all, and probably losing.’

On the outside, Tena Clark’s childhood in rural Mississippi in the 1960s looked like a fairytale. Her father was one of the richest men in the state; her mother was a beauty. The family lived on a sprawling farm and had the only swimming pool in town. Tena was given her first car – a navy blue Camaro – at twelve.

Behind closed doors, her parents’ marriage was 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 beauty queens and majorettes. She didn’t want to be a majorette – she wanted to marry one.

On Tena’s tenth birthday, her mother walked out on her father for good and Tena was left in the care of her black nanny, Virgie, who became Tena’s surrogate mother and confidante – even though she was raising nine of her own children.

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 challenge the bigotry that defined her world and be her true self.

PRAISE FOR SOUTHERN DISCOMFORT 

‘Tena Clark is a pioneering force of nature, and her story is as powerful, riveting and inspiring as she is.’ Maria Shriver 

‘A brave, wildly engrossing memoir.’ Bill Clegg, author of Did You Ever Have a Family

‘It’s easy to see how this book has been compared to The Help. But Clark’s debut is an entirely original – and true – story.’ Kirkus Reviews

• Language: English
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster Australia
• Release date: Oct 23, 2018
• ISBN: 9781925791938

Tena Clark

Tena Clark is a Grammy Award-winning songwriter, music producer, and activist. She lives in Atlanta. Southern Discomfort is her first book. 

Reviews for Southern Discomfort

[beamis12 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

"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 the Chickasawhay River behind our farm. There's a venom in the soil. But there's an alluring beauty to it as well"Teny grew up in Waynesboro, Mississippi, deep in the Jim Crow south. Her parents married when her mom was only fifteen, her dad from a very poor background. Yet, he became the richest man in the county, built a big house for his wife and four daughters. Their marriage beyond dysfunctional by the time of Tenys birth, she the youngest by ten years. Her mother sucuumbing more and more to alcohol to drown her unhappiness with her husband and his constant adulteries. Screaming, yelling their fighting the background to her days. Their black housekeeper Virgie providing the only consistency and unconditional love in which she could depend.Sixties and race relations were changing, but no where more slowly than in Mississippi. The ku Klux Klan were still active and a threat to those blacks and whites that didn't toe the line. Times that for the longest time Tent couldn't understand. The dysfunction in her family, ever present, led her to forge her own path. Surprisingly there was also occassins of love, times when her parents surprised her with their understanding. She was also gay, something she could not acknowledge nor tell her parents until her college years. Her parents, their relationship with her were complicated, and at the end the people they were surprised her the most.A fascinating look at Southern mores, a changing racial world, and a family that despite their lack of money problems, had more than its fair share of unhappiness.