When I stepped onto the tarmac of the Golden Triangle Regional Airport in Columbus, Mississippi, the first thought that crossed my mind was that it would be easy to forget the frigid Nebraska winters down here. I had been living in Lincoln for four years, enduring the harsh cold while pursuing a PhD in English at the University of Nebraska, but after graduation I was ready to leave the chilly weather behind. The hot and humid air that enveloped me wasn’t strange; it reminded me of my home in Lagos, which I left years ago to study the craft of fiction writing in America. But I could only stay for a while in the memories of that distant home, as they so often bring with them a sense of longing. I had gently tucked away my recollections of Lagos—memories that form the very foundation of my life journey and provide for me the strength and courage to face whatever the future holds—under the pile of my many homes since then.
I rushed through the small, air-conditioned waiting room to pick up my luggage and meet my Mississippi State University (MSU) colleague Saddiq and his family, who were waiting for me in the arrival lounge. I moved here to teach and was eager to experience my new home.
Upon arrival in Starkville, a black and blue striped lizard welcomed me into my apartment. It jumped into my living room after hiding in the shade between the screen and the front door. My scream didn’t stop it from skittering across the polished wooden floor and disappearing into an air vent. I didn’t go near that vent for a long time. However, I did exact my revenge by plopping the lizard into the first story I wrote in Mississippi, a tale about the many kinds of rain, unforgettable memories, and sojourns that lead to finding oneself. But I didn’t start to write in Mississippi until four months after my arrival. I could say it was the move, the new location, and my hard inflatable bed that caused my writer’s block. In truth, it was something more.
I needed to be sure I had found a home again, because it is only in the shadow of a homeplace that I create worlds and write stories. All the cities I have lived in have significantly shaped my growth as a writer and enhanced my work; they even serve as the backdrop for my stories. A place becomes a home when I can substitute my new experiences for the familiar markers of my birthplace—though I continue to miss the noise and energy of the open markets, the fresh fish caught from the Lagos Lagoon, and the dry harmattan winds that usher in the new year in West Africa. I know I have found a home when I walk around and everything feels ordinary, my initial sense of novelty having faded. It is in this comfortable space that I find the courage to express my deepest thoughts and embrace the act of creation.
I do most of my writing at night. Some writers prefer writing early in the morning; I write at the end of the day when my body has recovered from the day’s stress and I can finally control my ever-wandering mind. I carved out this time during my studies at two graduate programs while teaching composition and creative writing classes, consulting ten hours per week at the writing center, reading submissions for literary journals, and being a student in three classes every semester for seven years. Amid all of that, I needed to find a chunk of time to write. I wrote most of my MFA thesis and PhD dissertation in bed, but this preference has its hidden costs. During my MFA at the University of Nevada in Las Vegas a mentor asked me, “When do you write? There is no color in your story.” I got similar feedback from another mentor during my PhD in Nebraska: “You do know how to use colors,” they said in jest. “There’s one per chapter.” I am not averse to color, and maybe nighttime writing does affect my literary practice, but it is comforting to write as the promise of a new day slips through my window blinds, a reward for work well done. I did take my mentors’ feedback to heart, though. While working on an advanced draft of my dissertation, I let the bright hours between one night and the next in. This was difficult, as it was hard to find the sun in my small studio apartment at the back of an old, leaning building in downtown Lincoln. In Starkville I placed my standing desk against a window in my living room to let the radiance of the sun, the green of trees, and the distractions of everyday life—jogging neighbors, huge flies bumping against the window, jumbo mosquitoes flying about, and a golden silk orb weaver spider building a thick zigzag web to catch a meal—into my stories.
But nighttime isn’t as quiet in Starkville as most people would think; it is noisy and filled with shades of light and gray. My floorboards creak; the walls sigh and pop. I hear countless scratches from the air vents in my bedroom, and they fill my imagination with unmentionable creepy-crawlies living under the floorboards. Fear would keep me awake in those early months; I’d sit up in bed, switch on my bedside lamp, and try to figure out what was making all the noises. I’d listen to sounds from the outside pass through layers of glass panes to arrive in my room garbled and strange. Sometimes, to feel safe, I’d reach for a memory of Lagos and allow its sounds to wash over me. In Starkville, shadows and the starlit sky—unimpeded by brighter city lights—come into my work. Tree branches outside my bedroom inch across my window blinds, moving to the whispers of the wind. In the beginning, one of the trees was concealing light from a streetlamp, so it was cut down by facility management. I woke up one morning to the noise of a saw chomping on its wide trunk. In a couple of hours the noise stopped and only a stump was left. Now that solitary streetlamp makes sure that it is never completely dark in my room. Its light falls on my laptop, becoming a silent companion as I contemplate words that will form sentences to eventually become a story.
One of the first things I do in a new place, to make it feel more comfortable for me, is find a hair braider, as my mother taught me that how I present myself on the outside directly reflects what I feel on the inside, about myself and my family. It is easier to get my hair done in Starkville than in Lincoln. The number of hair braiders in a city correlates to the size of its Black population, and I appreciate this diversity in Mississippi, though being an African living in the Deep South means I am constantly learning about its weighted history. While I have a kinship with the African American population here, their experiences, even if they seem familiar, are different from my own. Every time I reach for my laptop to write a new story set in Mississippi, I am confronted with the fact that this familiar is also unfamiliar. I can write stories only from the perspective of a close outsider who is ever willing to listen, understand, and learn.
While I do not miss the hard water of Nebraska that dried out my hair and made it fall out in clumps, I do miss its literary community—my mentors, my cohort, and the ladies of my book club. I long for literary friends in Starkville. I do not doubt that I will find them, or they me, but in the meantime I’m grateful for my colleague and friend Saddiq, with whom I discuss my writing, as he does his with me. We share the same anxieties of being othered as Nigerian writers in Mississippi, and we face similar challenges with publishing decisions and immigration policies that affect our careers and work. My writing often challenges dominant narratives and expands the literary landscape; it exists outside of American literary categorizations and is often perceived as “exotic” or is undervalued due to its differences. For now, I find my community in church, in Saddiq’s children, who gift me the inquisitiveness and innocence of childhood, and in his wife, Sa’adaatu, who spoils me with food from home and good laughs when we take short walks in the neighborhood to get our weekly dose of vitamin D.
In Starkville I miss being able to walk for hours. There are no sidewalks on my side of town. I dared to walk to the MSU campus once, a feat I rarely repeat—for my safety and the sanity of the confused drivers who can’t understand why I’m walking on the road. In Lincoln I would walk down South 11th Street and turn onto L Street, make another turn at South 14th Street, and walk down O Street before making one last turn back onto South 11th Street. In those twelve city blocks, that perfect square of left turns, I figured out the end of my fiction manuscript. Now I make do with the circular boulevard I live on.
But Starkville isn’t in the middle of nowhere. It is only about four and a half hours from New Orleans, three hours from Memphis, two hours from Jackson, Mississippi, and one hour from Tupelo, Mississippi. I can’t remember when I stopped feeling that being stuck in a car for long hours at a time was boring, but I look forward to road trips now. During spring break I took a trip to New Orleans. Louisiana is quite different from Mississippi—the smell of stagnant water saturated the air. New Orleans is phonetically unlike Starkville, and I was fascinated by the different accents. I walked along crowded streets in the French Quarter. I sampled Creole and Cajun cuisine, the classic gumbo and shrimp étouffée over rice, ate beignets and pralines, and bought silver jewelry brought over from Bali. My travel experiences have increased my understanding of the South, allowing me to gain deeper insights into Mississippi and how the state compares with others nearby.
I have lived for over a year in Starkville, and during that time it has become a place I feel safe to write in and about. I’ve found a sense of home in this quiet university town and feel a connection to Lagos when I walk about in my wooded backyard—it reminds me of the fruit trees and bamboo thicket behind my family home.
I have finished three short stories since I arrived here, started two more, pitched two book reviews, turned in two biographical entries about African poets for the Dictionary of Literary Biography, and completed the eighth draft of my fiction manuscript, which I am now waiting to hear from my agent about publishing. I will continue to enjoy and be in awe of this place, touted by USA Today as the “Best Small Town in the South,” for the second consecutive year.
I will continue to celebrate Mississippi writers who have brought unique perspectives to American literature, writers who have used their voices to explore the complexities of race, identity, and the Southern experience, including Eudora Welty, Richard Wright, Margaret Walker, Jesmyn Ward, Kiese Laymon, Saddiq Dzukogi, and D. M. Aderibigbe. I will continue to teach their inspiring works to a new generation of writers and encourage my MSU students to explore their experiences and expand their literary heritage. And I will continue to write about Mississippi from my perspective and experiences, with great care, for I do not take for granted being a part of this state’s rich and complex literary landscape.
Olufunke Ogundimu, born in Lagos, Nigeria, is an assistant professor of English at Mississippi State University and an editor at the African Poetry Digital Portal. Her work has been published in Narrative, the Massachusetts Review, Black Warrior Review, Obsidian, adda, Transition, New Orleans Review, Jalada Africa, Asymptote, the Johannesburg Review of Books, Red Rock Review, and elsewhere.
All photos courtesy of the author.