When the Leaving Is Essential
Educated, young Mississippians are leaving the state in droves. Will they ever come back?
Last month, in a surreal turn of events, I found myself on a poolside patio belonging to a very wealthy Mississippian, drinking red wine and eating the fanciest, most delectable pimento cheese sandwiches I’d ever tasted. I was talking with a group of interesting writers and thinkers about a subject that occupies the minds of all Mississippians, regardless of age, class, or political leaning: brain drain.
One of the writers at the table, someone who I greatly admire, said that he often counsels young, college-aged Mississippians to leave their home state, expand their minds and opportunities, and then come back home when they have sufficient resources and skills to invest in their communities. It struck me as sound advice. Leave speaks to the logic of opportunity cost, but also to the youthful desire to “see what’s out there.” Come back speaks to the heart. I was reminded of Mary Miller’s Rooted questionnaire, in which she writes: “The leaving part was essential, though. If I’d never left, I’d feel much more conflicted about being here.”
Still, I couldn’t help but think that this counsel was maybe a little biased. As I looked around the table, I noticed that every single Mississippian there—aside from my own transplanted self—had followed a similar pattern. Each of them had left their home state for greener pastures, or at least a change of scenery. Growing up in Mississippi, they had felt constricted, out of place. They needed to get out. Then years later, they returned home, accompanied by a fresh perspective, a newly minted appreciation for Mississippi. I wondered, though, if these individuals were outliers. Realistically, how many Mississippians who leave are actually going to come back?
Realistically, how many Mississippians who leave are actually going to come back?
“Do you plan on staying in Mississippi after you graduate?” is a question we’ve been asking college students in our recent election-oriented questionnaires (an effort spearheaded by Rooted Editor Shira Muroff). College students are often first time voters, fueled by their convictions and future aims. By nature, they are also more mobile than those of us with mortgages and kids and furniture and pets and air fryers. They are more likely to—as I did at that age—move across the country after graduation with a rented van full of clothes and books and a bike. At twenty-two, I was not motivated by money, but by a desire for adventure and new experiences.
It makes sense that the movement of college grads is a great indicator of how a state is doing economically, socially, politically. Do students see a viable future for themselves here, or do prospects look better elsewhere? As the hard data and anecdotal evidence shows, for a large portion of Mississippi college students, “elsewhere” is winning.
As a young person, no one counseled me to leave my home state. In fact, some thought I’d be crazy to go anywhere else. In the ‘90s and ‘00s, the Denver metro was expanding in a seemingly infinite, voracious sprawl. (The modest two bedroom brick bungalow in Park Hill that my parents bought in the ‘80s and that my mom sold in the ‘90s is now a towering two-story worth at least a million dollars.) I was a second grader when our suburb first got a mall. I grew up watching the landscape around me change—open prairie was routinely bulldozed to make way for new housing developments, office parks, restaurants, and big box stores. The pace of development felt ceaseless. Traffic went from bad to worse as more and more people moved to town. And still the high rise office parks grew, the new restaurants, breweries, and hot yoga studios popped up all over the city.
I wasn’t swayed by the desirability of the place where I had been raised. I left Colorado just days after college graduation. I moved to Madison, Wisconsin, where my boyfriend at the time lived, and where I would stay for less than a year. I wonder now what would have happened had I not been in such a rush to get out. I was so young, so hasty to move on.
Do students see a viable future for themselves here, or do prospects look better elsewhere? As the hard data and anecdotal evidence shows, for a large portion of Mississippi college students, “elsewhere” is winning.
Looking back, I can see that I felt no sense of duty to the place that raised me. I knew Colorado would be fine without me, that it is fine without me. Duty, however, is something I see in many young Mississippians, and in the millennial and older Mississippians I know who left and then returned. They feel a responsibility to make their state better, whether or not they choose to stay here. They know, too, that Mississippi will follow them wherever they go. Fatimah Wansley, a sophomore at the University of Mississippi, writes proudly of “that southern twang in my voice.” Jordan Bush, who moved out of state after graduating from University of Southern Mississippi, carries Mississippi with him in tattoo form on his bicep.
Perhaps, too, there is a complex associated with being from a state that always comes last on all the good lists and first on the bad. Katy Simpson Smith says it best in her Rooted questionnaire:
“I think being a Mississippian has also instilled in me a lasting identification with underdogs—there are the underdogs we as a state have continually attempted to suppress, and there’s the underdog that is our state as a whole. Living in Mississippi is a lesson in advocacy; good things come only if you fight for them.”
People give up on Mississippi every day. To not give up is itself an act of defiance.
I live now in a city with a declining population inside a state with a declining population. Jackson is dotted with abandoned and foreclosed houses, empty lots, and shuttered public schools. On my way to take my daughter to daycare, I drive past the ruins of what was once a mini-golf course, the rusty structures and asphalt lot now overgrown with stands of goldenrod. I see so much potential in these palimpsests of Jackson’s past, visual reminders of the economic toll of net outmigration.
Just recently one of my daughter’s classmates left a gift bag and a note in her school cubby. “We’re moving,” the note, written by the child’s mother, said. “We’ll miss you!” At only two-years-old, my daughter is already experiencing the friendship casualties that I associate with living here in Jackson, Mississippi. On a personal level, the most painful aspect of brain drain is not the economic impact, but the psychic one. How many friends will we lose in the next decade? Will it someday be my turn to write the goodbye notes?
On a personal level, the most painful aspect of brain drain is not the economic impact, but the psychic one. How many friends will we lose in the next decade? Will it someday be my turn to write the goodbye notes?
I understand why any young person would want to leave Mississippi, and it would be hypocritical of me to stand in their way. But I also want to offer this insight that I could have given to my younger self who was so ready to leave home: there is adventure to seek and wisdom to gain in your own backyard. There is opportunity in places you’ve never imagined it could be. Get in on the ground floor while you can. Don’t be so eager to leave the party. Stay awhile. Grab a beer and a pimento cheese sandwich. You can always leave later on.
While you’re here, catch up on our incredible slate of September contributor issues, plus poems by Jianqing Zheng and a personal essay by incarcerated writer R. Banks.