“To identify a person as a Southerner suggests not only that her history is inescapable and formative but that it is impossibly present.”  (Sally Mann, 2005) 

Yes, Sally Mann, you are correct.  No matter how much effort you exert to escape it, that history is inescapable.  I should know.  I changed my accent as a child, moved to Manhattan for graduate school, married a Jew and much later became one, and lived in Palo Alto and Boston before moving to Texas.  When our daughter was in preschool, a friend asked her about her family's religion. She answered, "Daddy is Jewish and Mommy is Southern." …