Navigating cultural homesickness

A young Greta sits on a water bank outside of Sims Country BBQ

Most people expect culture shock when moving to another country or across the US, but what about moving from one southern state to another?

In my experience, moving from western North Carolina to northern Alabama, only 400 miles apart, was enough to throw me for a loop. Appalachia’s culture, while holding similar characteristics to southern culture, is distinctly different. People are often not prepared for the switch outside of their home culture bubble, but this one I didn’t expect.

I grew up in the foothills of North Carolina in the shadow of Grandfather Mountain. Our summers were blazing hot, winters (mostly) mild, and mountains just about as blue as the sky itself. 

In my town, little girls have a few options for their sport of choice. There’s the traditional softball, cheerleading, soccer, ballet, maybe swim if you have regular access to a swimming pool to practice, and the all consuming clogging. 

I clogged, so did most of my friends and relatives. When I moved to Alabama, I learned that no one else had the same experience. 

It was an odd thing to suddenly not be understood over a topic I thought two weeks ago was ubiquitous. In six hours, only two states away, I’d transitioned to a world where my cultural practice was diminished to “like tap dancing, but for rednecks.”

Not a great feeling for an already insecure and homesick seventeen year old. 

Anyone from the South knows that accents and lingo change from state to state, even region to region. Georgia’s southern belle accent is different from Alabama’s, which is different from Tennessee’s, which is a far cry from Mississippi’s. To my dismay, it did not take me long to learn that it seemed as though we were speaking entirely different languages. 

One of the constants of my day to day life was the occasional “Greta, what did you just say?” followed by my repeating the sentence, confused, and learning that some turn of phrase or word was totally foreign. Vocabulary shifts are the clearest difference to other Southern dialects, JSTOR author Chi Luu points out that much of Appalachian English uses many archaic terms dropped years prior elsewhere. 

These terms are accentuated by an accent that often changes the “oh” sounds at the end of words to an “er.” Examples include “hollow” to “holler,” and “window” to “winder.” Another less common change is the change of the “ah” sound at the end of words, causing words like “soda-pop” to sound closer to “sodey-pop”

It is no secret that Americans at large look down on the Appalachian accent. Bailee Harris recalls the shame she felt when offering to speak for a project in her freshman year of college, only to be told that her accent was the “pretty obvious” reason that the peer was more qualified to give the presentation. 

Harris’ situation is not unique, I experienced similar occurrences regularly. In my high school, where students all worked towards receiving an associate degree concurrently with our high school diploma, my classmates had never been told that our dialect was a barrier to success. 

When branching out into another region, though, biases about Appalachia become clear. Harris, speaking on the confrontation with her peer, said “I didn’t want others to think I was a hick — a hillbilly, someone ignorant, illiterate and uncultured,” upon the realization that her accent created such barriers in socialization.

I experienced a similar situation. When moving to my undergraduate school to complete my Bachelors degree, this change was most obvious among groups of men in an upper level astrophysics course.

Suddenly, I was not the equal that I had been in my high school. I was now younger than most of my peers, a woman, visibly feminine, and possessed an accent tied to areas of the country that people are often surprised support secondary education, much less full universities.

Over the course of my first semester, I learned to close my mouth in class, practice the Alabamian accent, and adopt a full new vocabulary and grammatical structure to my speaking and writing. Only then did I feel like I had gained an ounce of respect, even though I had lost myself. 

The loss of my language, though, could be forgiven if I hadn’t also lost my ties to the nature that raised me. One of the reasons I chose my school was my love for the stars. 

Huntsville, Alabama, is commonly known as Rocket City and its most visible landmark is a model of the Saturn V rocket that sent humans to the moon during the Apollo program. I attended the Space Camp hosted by the Space and Rocket Center as a child, so when I received recruitment flyers from my school, I was thrilled. Who doesn’t want to see a rocket every day?

My love for the stars started in infancy. One of my favorite parts of growing up was the habit my father had of taking me outside to sit on the hood of his white Toyota Camry with a laser pointer, pointing out constellations to me. On particularly clear nights, the Milky Way was visible from our front yard.

I knew my favorite constellations’ mythologies by heart (for the record, the Pleiades were my favorites, followed by Cassiopeia and Andromeda) and could point them out any time they were in the sky.

The first night after moving into my residence hall, I remember sitting outside to soak it all in. I could see the rocket, but I could only see enough stars to count on my fingers. There were no familiar celestial friends to greet me, so I found myself totally alone. Just me, the light pollution, and a boatload of homesickness.

Though I was still in the South, only a few states away from my own little corner, those first few months felt as though no one quite understood. I was from North Carolina, so I was southern, too, so why didn’t I get it? 

Looking back on the past is often difficult for everyone. Especially when the region at large is confused as to why you may not so seamlessly integrate into a culture despite being so nearby geographically. 

I wouldn’t change this experience for anything, I know so much more now than I ever would have if I remained home. Not to mention, many of my best friends (and my fiancée) have come from this move. Still, I would be remiss to not remember it as a shock to the system. 

I am a better person because of that confusion, but I still wish I could go back and give seventeen-year-old me a hug and tell her that her culture made her special, not weird. For those who plan on leaving Appalachia in the future, remember to own your differences rather than hide them away, and never be afraid to make them known. Your culture is an asset, not a deterrent to your success.