The moment I pulled my rental car out of my downtown #dallas hotel driveway to leave for DFW, a sickness hit me. No, it wasn’t the fear of another awful @americanair experience, but homesickness. I was still in the middle of town, surrounded by #dallas landmarks from the @hyattdallas glass ball in the sky to the grassy knoll and TX Book Depository. But the mere thought of leaving home made my heart ache. Folks don’t understand why someone like me is so attached to #texas (though I’m an independent enough person and thinker to spend my entire adult life since I was 18 away from the region where I was raised, unlike most who ask me that question). The answer to that question is best found in the books and articles that I write, bc it’s hard to articulate for me without telling a story. No region of America is perfect, and there’s an enormous alternative narrative about what it means to be Texan than what you see in media: right, left, literary, popular and otherwise. You find the true Texas in the cracks (ordinary, extraordinary folks like my family, extended family, family friends and personal friends who never fail to inspire me by their unwillingness to live “down” to people’s expectations of them), the mavericks (national leaders like the late Ann Richards and Barbara Jordan, and the Castro brothers, and even LBJ and Beto, bless his heart) the quirks (from Willie Nelson to Wes Anderson to Richard Linklater - add Beto to that list), the artists (from #blindlemonjefferson to @rdeborah191 to #vancliburn to #irmaphall to #annwilliams to @garyclarkjr to @leonbridgesofficial to @abrahamalexander to the queen 👑 bee 🐝 @beyonce), to the folks that support artists and writers and burgeoning young minds and dreamers (like Dr Robinson @aamdfp and #emmarogers and generations of excellent Black educators), and the folks you least expect to spring from within its borders (from Dan Rather to Bill Moyers to Annette Gordon-Reed). I can’t explain it, but I can base some really entertaining stories on it. Until I return home again … #nativetexan #juneteenthdescendant #intheheartoftexas #intheheartoftexasthenovel #oakcliffthenovel #blameitontexansthenovel #writerslife (at Dallas, Texas) https://www.instagram.com/p/CRUt7meniqg/?utm_medium=tumblr
