Mississippi Native: Emily Liner
"I loved calling DC home during the years I was there, but when the little voice in my head said it was time to go home, there was only one answer to what that meant."
What does it mean to call Mississippi home? Why do people choose to leave or live in this weird, wonderful, and sometimes infuriating place? Today we hear from former political consultant and current founder and owner of Friendly City Books in Columbus, MS.
Where are you from?
I grew up on the Coast in Bay Saint Louis and now reside in Columbus in Northeast Mississippi.
Why did you leave Mississippi? Where did you go?
I initially left Mississippi after graduating from high school. I was fixated on going to college out of state. Growing up, I always felt like a fish out of water, and I thought a change of scenery would fix everything. Little did I suspect then that I’d eventually return. I lived in Washington, DC, from 2004 to 2020 with a brief stint in Chapel Hill, NC, for grad school.
Why did you return to Mississippi?
The short answer is, I saw a neighborhood in Columbus full of old houses I loved. The long answer is, I was having existential concerns about society writ large. I noticed that the Members of Congress I worked with seemed really pessimistic about the state of the country.
People say Washington is broken all the time. The truth is, Washington is a reflection of the rest of the country. I came to realize that the brokenness is the result of clustering into places where we are surrounded by people who are just like ourselves and away from people we might disagree with, which creates an environment where the most extreme views dominate.
When I got to DC, being from Mississippi was such a unique characteristic that it was almost my entire identity.
Needless to say, I realized I was part of the problem. I left Mississippi because it was easier to get away from the feeling of not fitting in than to fight and try to make it somewhere I would fit in. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that there were places and people in Mississippi that created a space for me—I just had to put a little effort into meeting them.
The rubber hit the road for me during the summer of 2019 when I started to think seriously about what it would mean to listen to that little voice in the back of my head and come home. One Sunday afternoon I was driving down Highway 45 to Columbus after visiting my grandma in Olive Branch, and I was listening to a podcast interview with Kiese Laymon, and he said something that stopped me in my tracks: “Mississippi doesn’t need to be a place you perpetually run away from. Sometimes we need to run to Mississippi in order to create dope shit.” That was it.
Was the Mississippi you returned to the same one you had left?
No, it actually seems better in many ways. I often wonder how much of that is due to growing up and how much of it is real change. When I was a teenager, I thought everything sucked. But doesn’t every teenager think that? I assume that bad attitude colored a lot of my impressions of Mississippi then. But I’ve also talked to people who have been around while I was gone, and they’ve suggested that things really have improved, at least superficially. It’s very apparent in Bay Saint Louis, which is booming these days. In DeSoto County, where my dad and his family lived for a long time, I noticed new construction every time I visited. And here in Columbus, downtown is much more vibrant than I remember when I was in high school 20 years ago. But I know it’s a very different story in other parts of the state, and it’s especially a shame that state leaders have let Jackson flounder to the point where residents don’t have basic necessities.
I left Mississippi because it was easier to get away from the feeling of not fitting in than to fight and try to make it somewhere I would fit in. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that there were places and people in Mississippi that created a space for me—I just had to put a little effort into meeting them.
What does “home” mean to you? How does Mississippi fit into that definition?
I’ve always thought it was interesting that “home” can mean two places at once. It can be where you go to bed every night, and it can be where you go in your mind’s eye. There was a long time where I thought I would always have two distinct homes in that sense.
I loved calling DC home during the years I was there, but when the little voice in my head said it was time to go home, there was only one answer to what that meant. Mississippi was always home even when it wasn’t home because it’s where I came from. It’s where I went for the holidays. It’s where my mom was. Even if I hadn’t moved back and we were in an alternative universe having this conversation 50 years from now, Mississippi would still be home, like it or not. So to me the great irony is having both homes be the same home now.
How have you cultivated community in Mississippi? Who are the people who have made you feel rooted here?
Starting a bookstore was my way of putting my money where my mouth is. I hoped it would become a place for people who might not normally interact to encounter each other. I think about that in two equally important ways. In one sense, we want to be a venue for people who have similar interests or backgrounds but wouldn’t otherwise meet because they might live in different areas or have different jobs. We also want to hold space for people who are not alike at all to be around each other. To that end, we try to maintain a broad selection of books, with a dual mandate to offer a generous amount of books representing diverse backgrounds and life experiences as well as to include books that may not necessarily appeal to us personally.
It is a tough balance to strike in the increasingly politicized and polarized society we live in, but it’s important to our mission to have a book for everyone who might walk through the door.
It is a tough balance to strike in the increasingly politicized and polarized society we live in, but it’s important to our mission to have a book for everyone who might walk through the door. As the only bookstore in a six-county area, we have a public duty and a business imperative to serve everyone and fulfill their requests. But we also want to encourage people to turn off the part of their brains that incites fear and anxiety and panic—an amygdala-free zone—so that they are open to receiving the gift of peering into someone else’s heart through a book.
There is a lot of magic in creating collisions within a community. The staff at the bookstore might be the best example of that. I might not have ever met them and developed such strong relationships with them if they hadn’t been drawn to the idea of building an independent bookstore in our town. Now my mom refers to us as a “sister club” and we’ve taken that up as our rallying cry.
What’s the weirdest question or assumption you’ve encountered about Mississippi (or about you as a Mississippian) by someone who’s never been here?
For some reason, people from out of state refuse to believe that Mississippi has a coastline. It used to infuriate me, both as a native of the area who literally used to bike to the beach after school and as a geography nerd with a deep and abiding love for the Rand McNally Road Atlas. But now, I love that we all laugh at it and have completely embraced our fate as the landmass between New Orleans and Mobile.
How has living in Mississippi affected your identity and your life’s path?
When I got to DC, being from Mississippi was such a unique characteristic that it was almost my entire identity. There were literally three other students from Mississippi out of all 6,500 undergrads at my university; some high schools in Boston and New York sent more students in a single year. I have an old shirt from a college intramural softball game that says “Hey y’all” instead of my name above my number. Then being from Mississippi got really annoying, to the point where I’d use my passport instead of my driver’s license as an ID because I was tired of people commenting on it. But then it became a point of pride again when I started working at a new job alongside another former Mississippian. We bonded in my job interview right then and there, and we reveled in the inside jokes that our co-workers didn’t get. He was an important sounding board for me when I started thinking about moving back, and we remain in touch.
Ultimately, my life’s path brought me back to Mississippi because this is where it all began. There is frankly no other place where it would make sense for me to do the type of community-building that I wanted to do.
What is something that you’ve learned about Mississippi only by living here? In what ways has Mississippi lived up to your expectations?
I have been surprised to rediscover how much race is at the forefront of everything in Mississippi. In general everyday conversation, people will almost always indicate someone’s race when recounting a story, like a verbal tic. When I moved away, I actually became aware that I did it myself, and when I came back I started to hear everyone around me doing it again. But when it comes to racism writ large, it’s just about impossible to get the people who can do something about it to acknowledge it, and that stymies any further progress we could make.
Do you still think about moving away someday? Does a sense of duty keep you rooted here? Do you have a “tipping point”?
For a while after I moved back I wondered if I could go back to DC and pick up where I left off. But less than a year after opening the bookstore, we went through the traumatic experience of surviving a car accident on site. A car literally came crashing through the storefront while we were open. We were really lucky no one got hurt. It took two and a half months to rebuild. If there were ever a time to quit, that would have been it, but instead it made me even more committed to being here.
What do you wish the rest of the country understood about Mississippi?
It is so easy to make Mississippi a scapegoat for America’s sins that the rest of the country often thinks it has nothing to atone for. But there are scars and open wounds in every community. It would behoove the rest of the country to look at themselves in the mirror the way that we have had to.
Do you have a favorite Mississippi writer, artist, or musician who you think everyone needs to know about?
I’ve always admired my uncle Ken Murphy, who is a professional photographer. He was the first person I knew who made a living as an artist, and as kids my cousins and I would always squeal with excitement when he invited us to get in front of the camera. He has published five books of photographs of Mississippi and New Orleans, and they were always a touchstone for me when I was far from home. I’m excited that he will be coming out with a sixth book soon, My South Coast Home: Revisited, that retraces the scenes of his first one, as unfortunately the original images from it were lost in Hurricane Katrina.
Thomas Richardson is a writer I’m so glad to have reconnected with by virtue of returning to Mississippi, and I had the real privilege to publish his poetry collection How to Read. We went to high school together and lost touch for a while after our paths separated, but when I thought about moving to Columbus, he was one of the first people who convinced me that I could live here, even though he didn’t know it at the time. Our history teacher Chuck Yarborough is another unwitting accomplice who encouraged me to come back simply by showing me you can live here and love it even if you don’t love everything about it because you can do something about it.
Finally, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention W. Ralph Eubanks, even though he is a writer that everyone who writes in Mississippi seems to already know one way or another. His book A Place Like Mississippi came out around the time Friendly City Books opened, and it encapsulated pretty much everything I ever felt about what it means to be a Mississippian. But what makes Ralph really special is how generous and genuine he is—he gives a voice to those who might not otherwise be heard and brings along as many people as he can.
Mississippi could do something really special if it invested in creative entrepreneurs. Every dollar invested in a real live Mississippian means more to that person than every ten thousand dollars means to a multinational company.
If you had one billion dollars to invest in Mississippi, how would you spend your money?
The thing that’s so frustrating is that we did have a billion dollars to invest in Mississippi with the BP oil spill settlement. When it was first announced, I hoped the state would do something transformational with it. The coast doesn’t have a university of its own, and addressing that would have been a great way to use such a windfall. I also kicked around an idea to launch a program that would recruit former Mississippians to come back.
But now it’s clear that Mississippi needs to make very obvious and basic improvements before any growth can happen. Fix the water in Jackson. Expand Medicaid. No one is going to stay here or move here if they can’t drink from the faucet or get to a hospital.
I’d also love to put to bed once and for all the idea of reversing the brain drain with tax incentives. No 22-year-old is going to decide to stay in Mississippi after college because they might get a tax credit five years later. They are going to leave because they are going to get a job out of state that is going to pay more in one year than the credits are worth in five. I ultimately had to create my own job in order to come back home, and it involved a significant pay cut.
Mississippi could do something really special if it invested in creative entrepreneurs. Every dollar invested in a real live Mississippian means more to that person than every ten thousand dollars means to a multinational company. I just don’t know if our state government will ever show the political will to put a lot of money into something that will take more than an election cycle to mature, even though it will ultimately bear more fruit.
What or who do you want to shamelessly promote?
Friendly City Books would love your support. Follow us on Instagram, sign up for our email list, and listen to our podcast for our latest and greatest recommendations. If you discover a book you think you’ll love, you can get it from our online warehouse at Bookshop.org which will ship straight to your door. You can also donate to our new nonprofit project, the Friendly City Books Community Connection, through the CREATE Foundation.
We’re lucky to be part of an incredible network of independent bookstores in Mississippi, and we wouldn’t be here without them leading the way. When you choose to buy books, we hope you’ll shop with one of us so we can keep reinvesting in Mississippi’s creative economy.
What a wonderful bookstore this is! I loved visiting it back in the spring and was so impressed by their staff. Columbus is lucky to have them!
Friendly City Books is Fantastic. I ordered all my book club books for the next 12 months through their warehouse. Still need to visit but I’ll see them this weekend at the MS Book Festival. Hope to meet Emily in person one day - sounds like a great person to know! So much of what she said I feel about MS as well. ❤️