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In none of those places did I feel like such an outsider, or have such trouble with basic communication.
Outsiders often see it as a paradox, that such a poor, conservative, religious state should also have such a rich literary tradition, but it makes sense to Mississippians.
“There’s a secret to living here,” she said. “Compartmentalize, compartmentalize, and then compartmentalize some more.
It was all so familiar from Latin America, Africa, and the Caribbean: the collapsing infrastructure, the intermittent electricity supply, the air of lassitude and disorganization, the ancient forms.
I often forgot how hierarchical the
South is compared to the egalitarian West,
woods, murky bodies of water, and old rusting cotton gins, with the telephone poles listing slightly by the side of the road.