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Overview
A father and son's eloquent portrait and personal evocations of modern Mississippi
An exerpt from the book:
"Through the years two of the most singular extremes have been the desire, on the one hand, to dwell forever with all the myths and trimmings of a vanished culture which may never have truly existed in the first place, certainly not the way we wished it to, and the frantic compulsion, on the other, to reforge ourselves as an appendage of the capitalistic, go-getting, entrepreneurial North. . . . Between these two extremes there have been complex lights and shadings, and considerable ambivalence and suffering. Mississippians watch the same television as other Americans, frequent the same shopping malls and national franchise chainstores and fast-food establishments, and live in the same kind of suburbias. . . . At the new century it is the juxtapositions of Mississippi, emotional and in remembrance, and the tensions of its paradoxes that still drive us crazy. . . . In my work on this book certain ironies never failed to tease me."
— Willie Morris, 1999
Few writers have ever approached their native terrains with such an inclusive and compassionate understanding as Willie Morris. This book, his last, circles back home where he started. To love it and discover it one more time, he and his son David Rae take us on a trip through contemporary Mississippi.
Who could express so passionately an understanding of the Mississippi landscape? Who could capture so unerringly the state's contrasting and often contradictory faces? For his readers the answer is Willie Morris. For Morris it is his photographer son.
Surveying the familiar yet always strangely evocative panorama that became his literary terrain, My Mississippi contemplates the realities of the present day, assesses the most vital concerns of the citizens, gauges how the state has changed, and beholds what Mississippi is like as it enters the twenty-first century. This southern homeland to which Morris returned after terminating his career as a New York editor remained for him a tantalizing mystery, the touchstone for all his thoughts, and one of the last unique places in America. For Morris, despite its flaws, Mississippi is beloved.
With father and son in their peregrinations we witness what they see and hear — "the bugs on our windshield in the Delta springtime, the off-key echoes of high-school bands from the little Piney Woods football fields in the autumn, the supple twilights and sultry breezes on 'the Coast,' the hunting camps and picnics, and parades and pilgrimages, the catfish ponds and graveyards, the roadhouses and joints near the closing hour, the art galleries and concert halls, the riverboat casinos and courthouse squares, the historical landmarks of the old and the industrial complexes of the new."
"It has been a pleasure," Morris says, "more than that, an honor, to collaborate with my son on this project."
The son grew up in New York City, seeing his father's native land from the perspective of an outsider. As an adult he has chosen to live in or near Mississippi and has spent the past twenty years traveling and photographing the state. In a thoughtful and provocative photographic narrative entitled "Look Away," he presents striking, full-color images of his Mississippi.
This complementary collaboration of father and son unites their separate visions and shared love of a place that remains infinitely intriguing for everyone.
Willie Morris (1934-1999) wrote many books, including North Toward Home, The Courting of Marcus Dupree, and After All, It's Only a Game (all available from the Univer-sity Press of Mississippi).
David Rae Morris is a photojournalist who lives and works in New Orleans. His photos have appeared in Time, Newsweek, USA Today, The New York Times, and many other magazines and newspapers.
Synopsis
A father and son's eloquent portrait and personal evocations of modern Mississippi
Library Journal
This is Morris's (My Dog Skip; The Ghosts of Medgar Evers) posthumously published tribute to his home state, which he feels has been much maligned and misunderstood. In a four-part essay, the author addresses one of Mississippi's central paradoxes: the state finds itself at the bottom of all rankings in terms of social, educational, and human services but near the top at producing people of creativity and imagination. Leontyne Price, Elvis Presley, Oprah Winfrey, Jerry Rice, Eudora Welty, Tennessee Williams, and William Faulkner are just a few of the fellow Mississippians he extols in this balanced portrait. Morris celebrates the state's cultural, technological, and economic contributions while decrying its history of violence and racism. Photojournalist David Rae Morris, the author's son, contributes a photo essay that does not so much illustrate as complement the text. Recommended for larger public libraries and those with collections strong in the history and culture of the South.--Andrew Brodie Smith, Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Lib., Washington, DC Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.