Abstract/Description
I grew up in New England. Mansfield, more specifically: a suburb of the Boston Metro area. My only sense of regionalism while I was growing up came from the knowledge that the leaves change with the seasons, and that the Pilgrims anchored themselves here four centuries ago. I don’t know much about my genealogy except that my paternal grandfather came up from Illinois to marry Pattie Shea, so my name, at least, has traveled. But the other seventy-five percent of me, for all I do know, has been here forever. I am a New Englander. I’ve never been anything else.
According to Howard Odum and Harry Estill Moore, a region is “an area within which the combination of environmental and demographic factors have created homogeneity of economic and social structure” (Odum and Estill). In this vast American landscape, many people come to understand and sometimes define themselves within the context of their regional borders. Perhaps still reeling from Ellis Island shakeups or feeling insufficiently established within the “New World,” Americans seem particularly concerned with placing themselves, in proving that they belong someplace.
Recommended Citation
Ridlen, Kirsten
(2014).
Seeing New Englandly: Reading and Writing Place Right in My Own Backyard.
Undergraduate Review, 10, 120-125.
Available at: https://vc.bridgew.edu/undergrad_rev/vol10/iss1/25
Rights Statement
Articles published in The Undergraduate Review are the property of the individual contributors and may not be reprinted, reformatted, repurposed or duplicated, without the contributor’s consent.