Visible Spirits: A Novel

"It’s based on the true story of an African American woman who became the postmistress of a town in the Delta and her struggle with assuming a position of an authority in a majority Black place that was dominated by white men. The story takes place in the fictional town of Loring, Mississippi, which is Steve’s native Indianola, Mississippi. We’ve known each other since we were 19. Because I know Steve so well, I know it’s based on that story and it’s also Steve’s way of confronting the place where he grew up. The post mistress whose story inspired Steve’s was appointed by President Theodore Roosevelt. After Roosevelt, President Woodrow Wilson effectively shut Black people out of the civil service. So, it is mirroring that story. The history and fictional world fit together. A friend of mine, Tommy Franklin, said “a good novelist lies his ass off but he tells the truth.” That’s what Steve does. He takes historical facts and builds a story around them to create a broader truth. A Place Like Mississippi tells the story of Mississippi through its literature. When I was asked to write the book, my editor Will McKay said, I think this is a book that should begin in the Delta. My reaction was: absolutely not. The myth is that all of Mississippi literature springs out of the Delta. To dispel that myth, I began the book on the Gulf Coast with Jesmyn Ward and Natasha Trethewey, two African American women writing difficult things about the South. Then I move on through the state, using the geographic regions of the state to tell the story of its literature I work up to Oxford, Mississippi, and William Faulkner. The book includes a photograph of 28 working writers living in Oxford, Mississippi, to show Faulkner’s legacy. It was inspired by a photograph of 57 jazz musicians in Harlem taken by Art Kane in 1958 and published in Esquire magazine. I end the book in the Delta at writing class in Parchman prison and examining the story of writers from prison, using the poems of Etheridge Knight, who’s from Mississippi. So, it’s a journey through the state, through its real and imagined landscape and through its literature."