The Help and Thoughts on Mississippi

Fair warning: I am about to ramble.

I recently finished a book about Mississippi called The Help by Kathryn Stockett, about the relationships between white ladies and their black "help", which used to be the norm. I'm sure it ruffled some feathers back home but I, for one, am so glad that it was written. I struggled growing up with the history of my home state. Learning about the awful events from the civil rights era that we are known for but also growing up in a city where the tide had already turned (or at least, was turning). I have often felt stuck between shame for our past and curiosity about (and hope for) our future.

When I went to college out-of-state, I had to answer ridiculous questions about Mississippi: Do you have outhouses still?, Do you walk to school? And also some legitimate ones: what do you think about the use of the confederate flag?

All this to say, I have always had a love-hate relationship with Mississippi, bouncing between 1) shame and embarrassment for the past acts of our forefathers and 2) pride in our hospitality and southern food and traditions and the tightness of communities and the sense that wherever you go, you will probably run into a Mississippian and will feel like family when you do.

Mrs Stockett summed up several things so well that I wanted to document them:

1. Talking about Mississippi with a stranger:

"The rash of negative accounts about Mississippi, in the movies, in the papers, on television, have made us natives a wary, defensive bunch. We are full of pride and shame, but mostly pride.

Still, I got out of there. I moved to NYC. I learned that the first question anyone asked anybody, in a town so transient, was "Where are you from?" And I'd say, "Mississippi." And then I'd wait.

To people who smiled and said, "I've heard it's beautiful down there, " I'd say, "My hometown is number three in the nation for gang-related murders." To people who said, "God, you must be glad to be out of that place, " I'd bristle and say, "What do you know? It's beautiful down there." "

2. Defending Mississippi to a stranger:

"Once, at a roof party, a drunk man from a rich white Metro North-train type of town asked me where I was from and I told him Mississippi. He sneered and said, "I am so sorry."

I nailed down his foot with the stiletto portion of my shoe and spent the next ten minutes quietly educating him on the where-from-abouts of William Faulkner, Eudora Welty, Tennessee Williams, Elvis Presley, B.B. King, Oprah Winfrey, Jim Henson, Faith Hill, James Earl Jones, and Craig Claiborne, the food editor and critic for The New York Times. I informed him that Mississippi hosted the first lung transplant and the first heart transplant and that the basis of the United States legal system was developed at the University of Mississippi.

I was homesick and I'd been waiting for somebody like him.

I wasn't very genteel or ladylike, and the poor guy squirmed away and looked nervous for the rest of the party. But I couldn't help it.

Mississippi is like my mother. I am allowed to complain about her all I want, but God help the person who raises an ill word about her around me, unless she is their mother too."

3. What it would behoove us to remember and understand:

"Wasn't that the point of the book? For women to realize, We are just two people. Not that much separates us. Not nearly as much as I thought."

I can honestly say that I have felt all of these things toward my home state: defensive and prideful even though there are reasons I left, hopeful for deeper, more honest relationships among its people, and yes, at times, homesick for it.

I am grateful to Ms Stockett for bringing out into the open a topic that needs and deserves to be acknowledged and discussed. So that I can move further out of the shame of my state and deeper into its healing and into relationships.