Born Callie Russell Porter in a small log house on a farm in the central Texas community of Indian Creek, she was the fourth of five children of Mary Alice Jones Porter and Harrison Boone Porter. Her mother died before she was two, and the four surviving children (Porter, two sisters, and a brother) were raised by their paternal grandmother, Catherine Anne Porter, in Kyle, Texas. This household, dominated by a strong-willed woman, shaped her attitude toward gender roles and greatly influenced her aspirations, unusual in a woman of her time, for a career.
Notable among Porter's childhood experiences was the beginning of a lifelong friendship with a neighborhood child whom she perceived as an alter ego. The same age as Porter and, like her, one of four children, Erna Schlemmer belonged to an industrious family of German immigrants. From this early association Porter developed the interest in Germans that recurs in her stories and in her novel. The Schlemmers were remarkable in the small town for their cultural interests and for their trips to Germany. Porter recorded memories of the family in her story "The Leaning Tower" (Southern Review, 1941; collected in The Leaning Tower and Other Stories, 1944).
This is a free page. This page contains 183 words. This
biography contains 14,575 words (approx. 49 pages at 300
words per page).
Read the rest of this Biography with our Katherine Anne Porter Access Pass.
