An "unleashed love song” to her late grandmother, Nickole Brown's collection brings her brassy, bawdy, tough-as-new-rope grandmother to life. With hair teased to Jesus, mile-long false eyelashes, and a white Cadillac Eldorado with atomic-red leather seats, Fanny is not your typical granny rocking in a chair. Instead, think of a character that looks a lot like Eva Gabor in Green Acres, but darkened with a shadow of Flannery O'Connor. A cross-genre collection that reads like a novel, this book is both a collection of oral history and a lyrical and moving biography that wrestles with the complexities of the South, including poverty, racism, and domestic violence."Nickole Brown's unleashed love song to her grandmother is raucous and heart-rending, reflective and slap-yo-damn-knee hilarious, a heady meld of lyrical line and life lesson. Brown is blessed to be blood-linked to such a shrewd and singular soul, and the poet's mix of monologue, myth, and unbridled mayhem paints a picture of a proper Southern lady who is just—well, unforgettable." —Patricia Smith"In Fanny Says, Nickole Brown distills the whole of America into one woman: bawdy, loving, racist, battered, healed, and gorgeous with determination. Our country has no history that does not touch the South. Our divisions are our unions. Here, Brown unleashes a voice returned to teach us a lesson. Reader, fair warning: you can't hide from Fanny. You will be changed by this book." —Rebecca Gayle Howell

Table of ContentsFor Our Grandmothers IFuck Your Monthly Fanny Says She and Her Husband Had Their First Fight Fanny Linguistics: MalapropismsFanny Says She Spent It Pepsi Fanny Says Sometimes It's Worth the WhuppingGo Put on Your Face For My Grandmother's Teeth, Pulled When She Was Thirty-Six Fanny Says She Got Saved Fanny Linguistics: Nickole Fanny Says How to Make Potato SaladFanny Linguistics: SuperstitionThe DeadFanny Linguistics: Birdsong Fanny Says She Learned to Throw the First Stone Hettie Fanny Says How to Be a Lady IIClorox Fanny Says She Didn't Use to Be Afraid Fanny Linguistics: Publix HieroglyphicsFanny Linguistics: Origins Crisco For My Grandmother's Feet, Swollen Again Fanny Says How to Tend Babies Fanny Says She Wanted To See Elvis EPOFanny Says at Twenty-three She Learned to Drive Dixie HighwayFanny Linguistics: How to Say What You Mean Pheno Fanny Says She Made Him Feel Better How To Dress Like Fanny Fanny Says I Need to Keep Warm IIIA Genealogy of The Word IVFanny Says She Knows How Little Time is LeftFor My Grandmother's Gallstones, Reconsidered Sweet Silver Fanny Says She Meets a Stripper in the ER Bullshit, Bullshit, Bullshit Fanny Says Again the Same Dream on Morphine Flitter Fanny Asks Me a Question Before I'd Even Ask Myself My Book, In Birds A Translation for the Spiritual Mediator Who May Speak for Me to Frances Lee Cox, Wherever She May Be To My Grandmother's Ghost, Flying with Me on a PlaneFanny Linguistics: ThaumatologyThe Family Says It Celebrates Independence An Invitation for My GrandmotherA Prayer for the Self-Made Man For My Grandmother's Perfume, Norell Fanny Says Goodbye Afterword