Being Progressive Looks Different Here
The bar is lower but the stakes are higher.
If you know me, you know I have too many books, and I can’t stop myself from acquiring more. I love everything about books—their smell, the weight of them in my hands, their visually pleasing covers. Most of all, I love the way books spark my curiosity and imagination. A large swath of my bookshelf is dedicated to books about Mississippi and books by Mississippi writers. These books help me understand and deconstruct my experience as a Southern transplant; they help me dig deep into the history and stories of the place I call home, to understand my role in it all. Books and Mississippi are two of my greatest obsessions, so it only makes sense that the Mississippi Book Festival is my favorite event of the year.
Branded “a literary lawn party,” the Book Festival draws hundreds of authors and thousands of participants, along with independent book sellers, non-profits, and publishers to the Mississippi Capitol and its grounds during the hottest month of the year. With all the dirty politicking that takes place inside our state’s capitol, I like to imagine that filling the building with writers and book lovers is akin to an intellectual and moral cleansing of its halls (with one notable exception this year).
It’s one thing to go braless and advocate for prison abolition while living in Williamsburg. It’s an entirely different thing to do so in Mississippi. Going against the status quo here takes more guts and gumption.
Thanks to Rooted, I felt even more deeply connected to our state’s literary community at this year’s festival. I caught up with a handful of Rooted contributors in the book tents, in panels or waiting in line at the book signing tent, and I even got to meet some Rooted readers—the lifeblood of this publication—in person for the first time. At a pre-Book Fest party held at the End of All Music record store, I talked with a Mississippi expat who finds validation in our weekly Rooted questionnaires, where Mississippians discuss what they love and hate and miss about this state. For a number of years, this reader lived in New York City before moving back to the Deep South. In Brooklyn, she said, she never felt particularly progressive or outspoken within her social circle. And yet, upon returning to the South, she finds herself being perceived as borderline radical in her political and social views. I thought this was a fascinating observation, and it got me thinking about how deeply contextual our political identities in this country are.
On the one hand, the bar for identifying as liberal is so low in Mississippi it’s practically underground. Just look at our Democratic candidate for governor. Brandon Presley’s winning attributes are that he will not funnel money set aside for poor families into the hands of well-connected scammers, and that he will work to expand Medicaid. Oh, and he’s also Elvis’s cousin. Will I vote for Presley on November 7? Obviously. And I hope you do, too. His common-sense stances on corruption and Medicaid expansion put him leagues ahead of the incumbent, and yet lightyears behind a candidate who would actually uphold my rights and values. (Presley is anti-choice and he has vocalized his support for legislation that prevents trans kids from accessing healthcare.) He’d rather woo moderate Republicans than shake up Mississippi’s political landscape in a meaningful way. Now imagine Presley doing a stump speech in Brooklyn. He’d get a tomato thrown in his face.
Standing up for equality and justice looks different here in the South, where progressives have learned the art of subtlety and subterfuge, have mastered the art of reading a room, of building networks and coalitions, all while holding true to their core beliefs.
On the other hand, the political and social stakes are so much higher in the South. It’s one thing to go braless and advocate for prison abolition while living in Williamsburg. It’s an entirely different thing to do so in Mississippi. Going against the status quo here takes more guts and gumption. And people—like Fabian Nelson, who won his primary run-off vote last week and will now go on to become Mississippi’s first openly gay lawmaker, and Rooted contributor and staunchly pro-choice Democratic AG candidate Greta Kemp Martin—do it here every day with minimal recognition and validation.
Standing up for equality and justice looks different here in the South, where progressives have learned the art of subtlety and subterfuge, have mastered the art of reading a room, of building networks and coalitions, all while holding true to their core beliefs. (As a transplant, who sometimes crashes through unspoken context clues and social expectations, this is an art I’m still learning.)
And with that, I’ll try to bring it back to the Book Festival. A celebration of books on the grounds where book banning laws have been proposed and passed is fairly radical, no? To celebrate stories that move beyond the one dimensional narratives fed to us by talking heads and fearmongering politicians is a political act. We read books so that we feel seen. Or we read books to expand our own limited perspectives. At this year’s festival, one of my favorite moments was listening to James McBride digress from the topic of his deeply Black and Jewish book, The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store, to laud educators and rail against book bans.
As our contributors reiterate with every issue of Rooted Magazine, Mississippi is a complex place. As soon as you think you understand it, you read about a moment in history or witness an interaction that makes you realize you’ve barely scratched the surface. So let’s keep reading Mississippi books by Mississippi writers (especially the banned ones), and listening to the words of progressive Mississippi change makers. We’ll all be better for it.
While you’re here, catch up on our stand-out slate of August contributor issues plus a short story by Exodus Brownlow.
I used to live in Kansas and often felt that the progressives in Kansas were a lot more real than the ones I knew on the East Coast where it was swimming with the tide to be liberal. And really questionable whether some of the liberals were really genuine. Life means a lot more when you swim against the current. The writers in Eastern Europe, after the Communist tide receded, would comment on life was much more meaningful when they wrote their Samizdat's..
This is great.