I’m a northeasterner, born and bred. I was raised in Massachusetts, and my entire extended family hails from either from Connecticut or New York. But although my upbringing was different than Anna Fields’s grits-and-ambrosia-eating North Carolina childhood, I was willing to give her new memoir, Confessions of a Rebel Debutante, a shot. In a world of debutantes, Fields grew up as a Mr. Wizard-loving geek who loved to sing at her school’s talent show. As a show tunes-loving outcast, I hoped I’d have something in common with Fields after all. Confessions of a Rebel Debutante tells readers what it takes to be a debutante—and the story of why Anna Fields didn’t make the cut.
Whenever Fields is at a party, her friends ask her about the South. “They envision ‘the South’ as one of two stereotypes: either Gone With the Wind or Jerry Springer,” she writes. The truth, she believes, is somewhere in between the two. And even though Fields belongs to the prestigious Wellingham Academy, the oldest boarding school for girls in the Southeast, she doesn’t fit into the poufy-dress wearing mold that her fellow Southern belles do. She’d rather run around in overalls covered with catfish guts. (more)
