Rebecca Hill

The Mississippi writer, Rebecca Hill, demonstrates her Southern roots in her writing. She was born in Memphis, Tennessee, on January 18, 1944, to Meador Troy Hill, an industrial engineer, and Meredith Bush Hill. However, in 1946, when Hill was two, she and her family moved to the Jones County town of Calhoun, Mississippi, her mother’s hometown. She is the third child of four. She has three brothers She and her family then briefly lived in Yazoo City, Mississippi. When she was in second grade, the family moved to a nearby rural town of Soso, Mississippi, in Jones County where the novel Blue Rise is set ( Myers n.p.). During her third grade year, the family packed and moved once again to Palos Park, Illinois (1953) where the Hill family resided for over twenty years (May 227). However, as Southerners, they did not feel welcome. She claims, “We were exiles….” Though they lived in the North, they longed for the time they would go back home to the South.