A Quote by Erika Jayne
I think my mother and grandmother had style even though we're humble Southern people.
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My grandmother, my mother and my aunts and their friends were all of southern Chinese ancestry, and they were all strong figures. Though if you asked them who was the head of their families, they would have said their husbands; and yet it was the women who ran everything.
I never modeled myself after anyone. The person who had most influence on me was my mother, but it was really for her strength and courage more than her style, even though she had a lot of style. In a weird way, looking at pictures of me when I was 17 or 18, I was dressing the same way. I haven't changed very much.
My mother had a definite influence on my leadership style. She was very involved in the community. She would say that whenever you run into challenges or you're trying to make things happen, you've got to understand what makes people tick, what motivates them. Even though she was a business major in college, I think psychology was more of a passion for her.
People come to Nashville where I live and they say, 'What's a great Southern restaurant?' Well, you got to know the right grandmother, because there's a lot of magic to good Southern cooking.
Though I was a mother at 21, being a grandmother makes the whole thing absolutely normal and gorgeous. The relief, the joy of being a grandmother is wonderful.
My grandmother was a typical farm-family mother. She would regularly prepare dinner for thirty people, and that meant something was always cooking in the kitchen. All of my grandmother's recipes went back to her grandmother.
My Southern heritage is a big part of who I am. I grew up around people who seemed like characters but are actual, real people. My grandmother made sure I had manners and all that stuff.
My mother used to hope that I would rise up from my humble roots. Become someone sucessful, or even famous. I'm famous all right, but I don't think it's what she had in mind.
Growing up, I thought my grandfather was dead. Later, I learned he was alive, but my family pretended he didn't exist because of the terrible way he'd abused my grandmother and my mother. He did things like shave my grandmother's head and lock her in a closet. With my mother's help, my grandmother finally left him.
I spent summers with my mother's parents in Arkansas, where religion felt very present. My grandmother was Baptist, and my grandfather was Methodist. Double Southern whammy.
One thing I did have under my belt was, my mother lost her mother when she was 11. She mourned her mother her whole life and made my grandmother seem present even though I never met her. I couldn't imagine how my mom could go on but she did, she took care of us, she worked two jobs and had four children. She was such a good example of how to conduct oneself in a time of grief. When I lost my husband, I tried to model myself as much as I could on her.
We've had a humble upbringing. You know, my father came through as a political refugee; my mother comes from a hard-working-farmers family. We've had humble upbringing.
I think the ultimate challenge is to have some kind of style and grace, even though you haven't got money, or standing in society, or formal education. I had a very middle, lower-middle class sort of upbringing, but I identify with people who've had, at some point in their lives to struggle to survive. It adds another color to your character.
My grandmother and my mother and my grandfather, their style of praying was - all day long, they would pray by singing and humming.
Even though I was painted, even though I had on seven layers of paint - to the point that I got a tan, it was as thick as a fabric - I think I felt the most naked because I couldn't cover myself at all. I didn't have to, so I had to be much more open and relaxed.
Cancer runs in our family. I lost my grandmother to it. There's a saying that you meet people and instantly know them. My grandmother and I had that. The first time my heart was broken was when my grandmother passed away. I was twenty-one.
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