SPLIT THE BABY on Tour
A dispatch on writing as a Mississippi transplant, plus some upcoming book tour info
The following is a short dispatch about Mississippi and writing and my Mississippi/Colorado book tour schedule for Split the Baby: A Memoir in Pieces. I’m still putting together book events! Please reach out if you want me to chat with your book club or if you have an event idea. I am my own publicist, so getting this book into the world is truly a community/grassroots effort. Thank you so much for your support!
I sometimes wonder if I would have become a writer had I not moved to Mississippi. In school, I was always good at writing and language arts. I always loved to read, and I’ve been and on-and-off journal-er most of my life. At age eight, I even wrote in my diary that I wanted to write a book one day, a little ironic considering that I then abandoned that pristine diary after only three pages. Throughout my teens and twenties, I created and killed a number of blogs. But I didn’t really start writing in earnest until I began to grow roots here in Jackson.
In her Rooted interview earlier this month Bebe Wolf said that while her experience of home is entwined with her intimate knowledge of Mississippi’s landscapes and seasons, “the fact that it is Mississippi has always been a little bit incidental in my mind.” I’ve wondered the same about Mississippi’s role in my own understanding of place and creativity. Would I have decided to put my AmeriCorps education award toward an MFA degree and discovered a community of generous, creative mentors and peers had I moved north instead of south? Was there something about the approachability of really superb writers and the proximity of the Eudora Welty House and one of the coolest indie bookstores of all time that gave me the extra oomph I needed to buckle down? Or was it simply a case of right place right time?
In other words, has Mississippi been incidental or pivotal to my own development as a creative person, a writer? Impossible to know for sure, though I do credit this place with reigniting my love for literature.
In his wonderful book A Place Like Mississippi, W. Ralph Eubanks attributes our rural state’s outsized literary contributions to ”a landscape that pairs ordinariness with beauty, magic with madness, and mystery with magnificence.” And it’s true. One only has to pause for a moment, to witness the mad magic at work. As I write this, the neighborhood hounds have paused their howling; the throttle of a speeding motorcycle on the interstate barely registers above the evening chorus of chirping frogs. At all hours of the day and night, this place captivates me with its sensory inputs, its boggling contradictions. Writing—and reading—helps me make sense of it all.
There’s also that adage about needing to leave the place you’re from in order to better understand it. I don’t believe this is a universal truth—there are plenty of insights to be gained from staying put—but it has certainly been true for me. Living in Jackson, far from the high, dry plains of Denver, Colorado, has given me the distance to untangle parts of my own history. This Welty quote often comes to mind: “One place comprehended can make us understand other places better.” I don’t claim to comprehend this place—I’m not sure I ever will—but deepening my connection to Jackson and Mississippi has deepened my curiosity about the role of place and home in my own life and others’. This curiosity has, in turn, helped me to pry open and shed light on memories, beliefs, and assumptions that might have otherwise remained in darkness.
Curiosity-driven interrogation of the past is a central piece of my forthcoming memoir, Split the Baby, which takes place mostly in the sheltered suburb of Denver where I grew up. The book explores what it means to grow up in a fractured family, feeling torn in two, and trying desperately to become whole. Many kind friends, family, and Rooted readers have already supported this book’s entry into the world—thank you. And there is still time to pre-order, if you’d like. (Pre-orders make a big difference for authors, especially debut authors like me.)
Mississippi book stores continue to nourish our love of stories, and I’m so grateful they exist. There are some wonderful, hardworking booksellers who have graciously opened their store’s doors for book events with me, and they will soon have *signed* copies in stock! Pre-order a signed copy of Split the Baby from Lemuria Books in Jackson, Square Books in Oxford, Friendly City Books in Columbus, or Pass Christian Books on the Coast—or catch me soon at a bookstore near you! (I’ll also be coming to Fort Collins, CO in July.)
Summer Book Events Schedule:
June 3 - Lemuria Books Book Launch! with Ellen Ann Fentress Signing @ 4:30pm | Reading/Conversation @ 5:30pm Jackson, MS June 4 - Square Books with Mary Miller 5:30pm @ Off Square Books Oxford, MS June 5 - Friendly City Books with Kendall Dunkelberg 7:00pm Columbus, MS June 10 - Pass Christian Books with Rachel Dangermond 6:00pm Pass Christian, MS June 23 - ISJL's Southern & Jewish Conference (registration required) Workshop & Author Talk Jackson, MS June 26 - Rooted's Bottom Reader Book Club with Catherine Simone Gray Virtual July 22 - Old Firehouse Books with Alison Turner 6:00pm Fort Collins, CO
P.S. If you want to stay up-to-date on evolving book events, I’m doing my best to keep my personal website updated: laurenrhoades.com.
How exciting! I can hardly wait to dive into my copy.
Good luck with your book launch and subsequent tour! Maybe you need your t-shirts, as with rock bands?