Mississippi Transplant: Alex Melnick

"Mississippi has always felt like a home to me, or at least a place where I could breathe easier."

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 Operation Shoestring’s Communications Director and Millsaps Adjunct Professor Alex Melnick, who fell in love with Mississippi when she enrolled at Millsaps College in 2012.

Featured contributor Alex Melnick is from Jupiter, Florida.

Where are you from?

That’s an incredibly loaded question for me! Sometimes, I like to lead people on and imply I’m from “here.” I’ve spent my entire adult life here, and I feel some bitterness in saying that I’m a transplant. But saying you’re from here when you were born elsewhere isn’t how this state really works.  

So, another true answer is that I’m from Jupiter, Florida. Jupiter is in Palm Beach County, just an hour or so outside of Miami. It used to be a small beach town, and now it’s probably most famous for being the home of Tiger Woods and the Trump boat parade. I don’t think I’ve ever really untangled how I feel about Jupiter, the place, from how I feel about my experiences there, but I am thankful I grew up on the beach. I also feel a small sense of schadenfreude when I see what’s been going on politically in Florida. Mississippi has always been America, and now Florida is waking up to the fact that they’re Mississippi, too.  

When did you move to Mississippi and why did you move here?

I moved here in 2012 to attend Millsaps College. I still have no idea how I had the chutzpah to move to Jackson, sight unseen, on my own. I literally knew no one in the entire state. I just felt like it was the right thing for me to do at the time, and it was— the moment I got out of the airport, I immediately had a desire to live here. It might’ve been the Jackson sunset, might’ve been the really cute college junior who picked me up, the way the summer air felt, or somewhere in between all that. Mississippi has always felt like a home to me, or at least a place where I could breathe easier. 

There were a few signs when I was growing up that, in retrospect, meant that maybe the move to Mississippi wasn’t as random as I thought it was when I was 18. Donna Tartt’s book, The Little Friend, was one of my favorite books growing up, and there was a period when I obsessively watched O Brother Where Art Thou on the bootlegged Russian DVD my dad brought back from a business trip from Moscow. I always wanted to live in a place that felt like it had a culture and a tangible history instead of the prefabricated community that Palm Beach County was turned into. Man, did Mississippi deliver on that.

Alex and her friends at Jackson’s St. Patrick’s Day Parade.