Living in a Place of Mixed Feelings
Reflections on one whole year (!) of gray area, nuance, and contradiction with Rooted Magazine.
As Rooted Magazine turns one, I’ve been reflecting on the origins of this project. Sometimes, I think that I started Rooted in order to make up my mind about whether or not I should stay in Mississippi, devising an elaborate pretense to ask interesting people invasive personal questions about why they stayed here, or left, or returned. But really, if I’m being honest, the genesis behind this project was the 2022 Jackson water crisis.
That summer, the water coming out of our faucets was undrinkable. I didn’t even trust it after boiling. This was not the first time we had been under a boil water notice in Jackson, but it was the first time that the notice had lasted for weeks, without an end date in sight. Thousands of people had no water at all. I was angry at our state and city leadership for their failings, angry at the forces of structural racism, the apathy of people in power, the disinvestment from our capital city that had led to this point. And I was afraid, because the water crisis had exposed just how wobbly and unsound the underpinnings of my life here were.
How could I pretend to care about my own career and artistic goals when I was preoccupied with whether the bath water my daughter swallowed would make her sick? Clean water was at the foundation of our basic hierarchy of needs. Still, I had to acknowledge how lucky we were as a household who still had running water at all. We did not have to drive to pick up water jugs, or flush the toilet with buckets of collected rainwater.
I didn’t want to be pitied for the place I had chosen to live and that I still loved in spite of its crumbling infrastructure. There were real reasons why I still lived here. I wanted people to see the Mississippi I saw, its lush green beauty, its long legacy of grassroots activism, its music, art, and literature.
As Jackson made national news for the ongoing water crisis1, I began fielding concerned calls and texts from out-of-state friends and family. Donations poured in to local community organizations who were distributing water to seniors and other vulnerable people. Mostly, I was grateful for the concern and offers to help. And I was grateful, too, for the pressure that national attention would put on state and national leaders to help fix our broken water system. And yet. All that hand wringing and concern from New York Times subscribers in urban metropolises began to feel vaguely like pity. I didn’t want to be pitied for the place I had chosen to live and that I still loved in spite of its crumbling infrastructure. There were real reasons why I still lived here. I wanted people to see the Mississippi I saw, its lush green beauty, its long legacy of grassroots activism, its music, art, and literature.
In essence, I felt split in two. I was deeply disappointed by Mississippi’s leadership, and deeply protective of Mississippians. In talking to my Jackson friends, especially fellow transplants, this was a familiar contradiction. We didn’t want pity from our out-of-state contacts, we wanted solidarity. We wanted people to see Mississippi’s issues not as separate from theirs, but as symptomatic of the failings of our country at large.
And so, Rooted Magazine was born. Or the idea at least. The first issue wouldn’t go live until December of 2022. For me, that crisis brought to a head many existential questions about what it means to live in Mississippi. Ultimately, I was just tired of being stuck inside my own skull, thinking around and through these questions without anything to show for my efforts. I wanted to hear what other folks had to say, folks more interesting and articulate than me. I wanted to make something that would be meaningful or cathartic for people who live in and/or want the best for our state.
I want Rooted Magazine to be a place where these mixed feelings are explored with curiosity, where maybe they’re even celebrated. Where nuance and gray area are everything. Where hard truths aren’t sugar coated.
Recently, I was listening to a Fresh Air interview with Zadie Smith, one of my favorite writers. Terry Gross asked Smith if she felt mixed feelings about England as her home, as the place where her mother had emigrated to from Jamaica, and as the colonizer and enslaver of her mother’s ancestors. Talk about a loaded question! Smith’s answer struck me. She said:
I guess perhaps the difference between me and, sometimes, people I come across is that mixed feelings to me are completely normal and healthy. I live in a place of mixed feelings. They don't agonize me. I just experience them as fact.
That’s it! I thought. That’s exactly how I experience Mississippi, as a place of mixed feelings. I want Rooted Magazine to be a place where these mixed feelings are explored with curiosity, where maybe they’re even celebrated. Where nuance and gray area are everything. Where hard truths aren’t sugarcoated. In his Rooted questionnaire, Jimmy Cajoleas writes that Mississippi is “a place of contradictions deep in its heart, and that’s what makes it so essentially human.” I can’t say anything truer than that.
Rooted Magazine is now one year old. Since January, we’ve published forty-eight interviews with Mississippi natives, transplants, and expats; and ten lagniappe issues filled with original art, photography, poetry, and prose. Our community has grown to 900 subscribers in forty-five states and thirteen countries. If you want to check out our contributors’ favorite books by and about Mississippi, we’ve added sixty-five books (and counting!) to our Rooted Reading List on Bookshop.
In the last weeks of the year, I’ll be re-publishing some of my favorite interviews from early in 2023. In the new year, I look forward to bringing you more interviews with fascinating and diverse Mississippians, as well as more original creative writing. (This is your sign, writers, to send me a pitch!) We’ll also be starting a Rooted Book Club! Stay tuned for more info on that one.
Thank you for reading and contributing to this project. And an extra special thank you to paid subscribers for making this project financially possible. If you feel inclined, please leave a comment below about how you found Rooted, what you loved reading this year, and what (or who!) you’d like to read about in 2024. If you’d like to recommend someone to take the Rooted questionnaire, fill out this handy form that our editor Shira created. Thanks again for being here.
If you’re new to these parts, catch up on what our insightful November contributors had to say.
If you want updated information on the efforts to fix Jackson’s water system, check out Mississippi Today’s ongoing reporting on the Jackson water crisis.
Lauren - was it Marshall who introduced us? Scott? I'm not even sure, but I was a ga ga over your questions. I've been an investigator reporter for most of my career, and you always want the extended, open-ended questions and your questions are more than that! They make us think, and the responses are so satisfying and different and nuanced. I don't like the smell of pity either - people not from here have all their judgments about what here is - they don't know. Yes, it stings a little that they think they do, but I have to say I'm here - I haven't left - so there, where they are, isn't calling to me either. I'm glad that this is not a farewell and instead an end of year taking stock - I rarely read much of anything online and always take note of what you send.
Lauren,
I was apprehensive that you were about to tell us goodbye. I am delighted that for now, you are staying in Mississippi and are continuing Rooted. Though I disagree that that there are folks more interesting and articulate than you.
A bit about my story. I lived on the West Coast for 11 years and returned home with intense shame for all things Southern. Rooted is helping me heal. e.g., Ellen Ann Fentress shared, "Smug comments from those outside the state about how Mississippi and Mississippians deserve everything bad coming to them... That disdain is as cruel as the agendas of the politicians they condemn... If snide non-Mississippi critics want to be constructive, support the many Mississippians working for better on the ground. And consider moving your progressive selves here where your vote and efforts will make a difference." And today, you shared, "We didn’t want pity from our out-of-state contacts, we wanted solidarity. We wanted people to see Mississippi’s issues not as separate from theirs, but as symptomatic of the failings of our country at large."
Thank you,
Lisa