As usual, my fervent defense only made me miss the Magnolia State more.Īfter this encounter, I drove across town to my choice bookstore to decompress. I inhaled deeply and counted before responding: 'I did not escape anywhere and I miss my home state and all my loved ones there.' As usual, I defended my home. She asked me if I 'was so glad to have escaped' Mississippi. One day, a stranger clocked my accent while I was making groceries. And when presented with these truths, they don't care, choosing instead to double down on the dirt-slinging. The same people who insult my home do not know it's the Blackest state in the country, nor do they know our history of resistance. Worse, the insults are often ahistorical and rooted in nothing but misunderstanding. As a multigenerational Mississippian, those attacks are personal. I respond, defending my home, my family and friends, my ancestors, and myself. They'll tell me, unprovoked, that they would never want to go to Mississippi. They'll ask me if it was 'scary' living in Mississippi. But more often than not, the comments come specifically because they know I'm a Mississippian.

Sometimes, the insults come without the person knowing where I'm from-'This isn't Mississippi' is a surprisingly common adage up North. These bookstores, home to works from so many of Mississippi's literary giants, have been a refuge from routine insults to my home state.

In this separation from my homeland, I've been looking for tastes of it in this region's bless-your-heart attempts at soul food-and lately, in used bookstores. To say that the first years have been difficult is an understatement: I moved during a pandemic and uprisings against racism across the country. Culturally, geographically, and, obviously, climatically, New York is drastically different from home. I lived in Mississippi from the moment I was born until about two years ago, when I moved to Upstate New York for a writing job.

Mildred d taylor book series