Mississippi Transplant: Nora Katz
Mississippi Transplant: Nora Katz
"One of my greatest points of pride in my life is that I have always been able to make a home everywhere I go. Home is where we plant ourselves, for now or for forever."
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 public historian, writer, and theatre-maker Nora Katz.
Where are you from?
I grew up in the woods of Pennsylvania, about 60 miles north of Philadelphia.
When did you move to Mississippi and why did you move here?
I moved here in September 2017 for my job, which I applied for despite never having been to the Deep South—“wouldn’t it be funny if I moved to Mississippi?” Reader, it was indeed funny.
I came straight from Dublin, Ireland, where I was living while earning a Master’s degree in Public History and Cultural Heritage at Trinity College Dublin. I did all of my job interviews in the kitchen of my tiny Dublin apartment—a preview of the COVID years.
What does “home” mean to you? How does Mississippi fit into that definition?
One of my greatest points of pride in my life is that I have always been able to make a home everywhere I go. Home is where we plant ourselves, for now or for forever.
I think I have lots of homes—my childhood home, the coast of Maine, and all the places where I’ve lived. Home is in a theatre, or on a weekly tabletop role-playing game Zoom call with friends, or with my cousins, or swimming in a lake in northeast Mississippi, or any time I’m near the Atlantic Ocean. Home is also the familiar aisles of the local grocery store, and around the kitchen table, and on the phone with my grandmother. Mississippi has been my home for the past five and a half years, and no matter what happens, it always will be.
What do you miss most about the place where you’re from?
I miss winter. The magic of snowfall, the quiet of the forest on cold early mornings, the crackle of the wood stove. Winter is my favorite season and I miss it more and more every year that I’m here. I miss being excited for snow rather than being afraid of losing water for weeks if it gets below freezing.
I know that a Mississippi summer has its own magic, but I am truly on the verge of tears every time I have to wear shorts in January.
How have you cultivated community in Mississippi? Who are the people who have made you feel rooted here?
When I moved to Mississippi, I resolved to say “yes” to everything—invitations to events, offers of meals, ideas for projects. I dove headfirst into this place, and I feel like within weeks I saw someone I knew every time I went to the grocery store. It felt like home really quickly.
But the most important thing is that I moved in with two people I’d never met before, and they welcomed me into their family. We’ve lived together now for the entire time I’ve been in Mississippi. They are the kindest, most generous people on the planet, and every part of my life is richer and sillier because of them. I truly can’t emphasize enough that my friends are why I love this place. Every time I talk to my mom on the phone, she tells me to say hi to my Mississippi family for her. I always laugh, but I always do it.
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?
Recently I met with a group of New Yorkers who traveled to Mississippi to learn more about the state’s Jewish and Civil Rights history. This was a few weeks after the water crisis of summer 2022 had left the national news, and they were wary of coming here—”is it safe?” “What happens if we drink the water?” I was frustrated by their ignorance—tens of thousands of us are here drinking the water every day, and it’s horrible but we make it through, and how dare these outsiders fear for their own safety when my neighbors can’t even wash their dishes? But they were open to hearing about why it’s like this, about the relentless malevolence of our state leadership. “I don’t understand,” one of the women said. “It’s just pure malice, pure evil.”
I realized then that in other places it’s possible to pretend that the wolf is in sheep’s clothing. In Mississippi, all the darkest impulses of people in power are laid bare. I would argue that this is quite obvious everywhere, but if you don’t yet understand the deep-rooted oppression in our history, Mississippi makes it impossible to ignore.
How has living in Mississippi affected your identity and your life’s path?
I pull from Mariame Kaba’s work all the time, but my mantra for the past few years has been from her: “Let this radicalize you rather than lead you to despair.” I will freely admit that Mississippi has radicalized me. It shouldn’t have taken moving here to turn me into a full-blown prison industrial complex abolitionist, but here I am.
I also spent the past few years on the sidewalk outside of the Jackson Women’s Health Organization as a Pink House Defender, which changed my life in ways that I both do and don’t yet understand. The gift of being a part of that community, especially in its final days, is something I will carry with me forever.
What is something that you’ve learned about Mississippi only by living here? In what ways has Mississippi lived up to your expectations?
Mississippi is a place where trauma/pain/violence coexists with profound and radical joy. I have never lived in a place where people care so deeply about their state—patronizing local businesses, going to every local event, advocating for what we need, being deeply involved in community organizations and mutual aid. We are angry about injustice, but we are also so in love with this place. I came to Mississippi with no expectations, but the greatest gift this place has given me (other than meaningful and lasting relationships) is a deep belief in the power of joy.
Have you ever thought about moving away? Does a sense of duty keep you rooted here? Do you have a “tipping point”?
I have always been restless—my friends might call me a flight risk. My brain says “what’s next what’s next what’s next” almost on repeat. There’s this line in Sarah Ruhl’s play Eurydice: “He is always going away from you. Inside his head there is always something more beautiful.” So I think about leaving all the time.
I didn’t imagine I’d be here this long, and I never could have pictured the life that I have now. But Mississippi has a way of pulling you back in. Sometimes I think about living here forever, and I don’t hate the way that feels. I also feel like the world is ending, so what does “forever” mean, anyway? I’ve grown up here—I moved here at 23 and I just turned 29, a birthday that feels like a milestone. I am a different person than I was when I drove across the state line with everything I owned in my car, for a thousand different reasons.
In the last year or so, with escalating water crises and the closing of the Pink House, waking up in Jackson, Mississippi, every morning has started to feel more and more like a political choice.
Maybe it’s an act of defiance or spite. Sometimes making a life here feels like a big “fuck you” to our legislators, or like I’m trying to prove something to the people in other parts of the country who don’t understand what it’s really like here. Sometimes there’s pride in that, but sometimes it’s painful—I don’t want to have to field texts from my family every time we’re in the national news for some new tragedy. Making a life in a place that I love shouldn’t feel that way.
What do you wish the rest of the country understood about Mississippi?
As a white transplant, I don’t feel like this place is mine to describe or complain about or praise. But I have the strange privilege—as an interpreter of this state’s history and as the only person in my family ever to live in the Deep South, let alone Mississippi—of being the first person a lot of people talk to about the realities and beauties of this place and its people. I get to “spread the gospel of Mississippi,” as I call it, and try to open the door a crack for the people who will come after me.
I wish everyone understood that Mississippi is just like everywhere else—that Mississippi’s problems are America’s problems. Racism and oppression are enacted with brutal efficiency here, whereas in “blue states” there is the pretense of subtlety. But no one is safe, really. I think about Patrick Jerome’s map of the US all the time—that even in the most deep-blue places, there is only an “illusion of safety from Mississippi.”
I also wish that people understood that the most meaningful anti-racist work, and the most meaningful and truthful interpretation of our country’s history, is happening in Mississippi and the South.
The conversations people are having here, and the ways that we are confronting systemic racism, aren’t happening anywhere else. I can’t imagine people back home in the northeast wrapping their heads around even the smallest parts of the stories that are being told in, say, the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum or the Smith Robertson Museum. The local journalism that’s exposing corruption. The work that’s happening among students at Jackson State. The organizing around abortion access and reproductive justice. Yes, our problems run deep, but so does our resistance.
Do you have a favorite Mississippi writer, artist, or musician who you think everyone needs to know about?
I have fallen head over heels in love with Coulter Fussell’s work. Coulter is a quilter and textile artist in north Mississippi whose work is almost architectural. She uses found fabrics to create these sculptural quilts that feel like both an expression of the long and essential history of quilting as a traditionally feminine practice as well as a total subversion of the art form. Quilts as memory, identity, and politics. It’s my dream to learn from her.
If you had 1 billion dollars to invest in Mississippi, how would you spend your money?
Here’s my order of operations: finish the restoration of and set up an endowment for Temple B’nai Israel, home of the oldest Jewish community in Mississippi (more on that later). That’s like $10 million. $15 million if I’m being generous, and I think I am.
Next, throw no-strings-attached money at the people doing the most interesting and innovative theatre in our state, especially New Stage Theatre and Uproar Theatre Company. Let’s call it $30 million all in to make sure they have the freedom to take risks and tell new stories.
More funds for more friends: Big House Books and the Mississippi Bail Fund Collective. How much money do we need to spend so that no one in Mississippi is in prison? That might take the rest of the billion dollars and then some.
Then I’m pouring cash into the Mississippi Reproductive Freedom Fund so we can get people the resources they need to access abortion. Plane tickets, car rides, child care, birth control, the abortion pill—how much money do we need to spend so that no one in Mississippi is pregnant if they don’t want to be?
Fighting for the right to abortion means both mutual aid and advocacy, so I’m also giving a few million to my friends at We Engage, who are fighting the hard fight to shed light on the horrors of the violent Christian nationalist anti-abortion movement. The Pink House is forever.
Whatever’s left goes to Jackson Public Schools. Every single person deserves access to a quality education that inspires them, challenges them, and helps them understand the world. Why shouldn’t the country’s best public schools be right here?
What or who do you want to shamelessly promote? (It can absolutely be a project you’re working on, or something you are involved in.)
I hope you’ll consider contributing to the organizations I listed above. I especially hope that you will donate to the Temple B’nai Israel Restoration and Preservation Fund—we are currently raising money to provide a 1:1 match for a Save America’s Treasures grant from the National Park Service. Temple B’nai Israel is one of the most important religious buildings in the United States; it tells the complicated story of migration, community-building, and Jewish assimilation in the Deep South.
If you live in or near Jackson, you should become a New Stage Theatre subscriber. We have some amazing things coming up, and live theatre needs your support.
If you want to hear me talk about southern Jewish history and culture, check out the ISJL Virtual Vacation. If you want to play weird, emotional tabletop role-playing games, I write those, too.