National Book Lover's Day | 5 Mississippi Authors You Should Know
- Courtney Jones
- 1 hour ago
- 5 min read
It’s National Book Lover’s Day this August 9th and ‘Sipp Talk wants to tell you 5 Authors You Need to Know. Mississippi has a rich literary history and is a source of so many diverse and impactful stories.
From the fictional tales of former heroes to the lived accounts of revolutionary innovators and cultural giants, Mississippi has seen and told about it all. This list isn't exhaustive, but I want to highlight some of my personal favorites from poignant social critiques to easy reads with emotion written into every page.
I hope you can take a little time to discover what these and other Mississippians have written about.
Richard Wright - Native Son: Born in Roxie, MS, Richard Wright is a literary giant among giants. His works are classic and have informed storytelling and literary tradition across America.
Native Son chronicles the story of Bigger Thomas, a 20-year-old man from Chicago’s South Side. Although a somber tale of choice decisions and life-altering mistakes, this novel highlights racial dynamics, power imbalances between social classes, and what happens when marginalized people are desperate to escape their situation – even if that means becoming a part of the systems that have harmed them.
A tale worth reading and sitting with, Native Son shows us that we can all choose to rise above or sink into our own demise.
Jesmyn Ward - Salvage The Bones & Navigate Your Stars: Our next author has two entries. Jesmyn Ward is an amazing novelist and award-winning writer. Her family originally hails from DeLisle, Mississippi, a small community near Pass Christian, Mississippi, on the state’s Gulf Coast. My favorite works by her are the novel, Salvage The Bones, and the shorter work, Navigate Your Stars.
Salvage The Bones is based in a town eerily reminiscent of her hometown and is a scene set to the background of preparing for Hurricane Katrina and the coming-of-age story of Esch, a 15-year-old who is a soon-to-be mother, alongside her brothers and father. Having lost her mother during her youngest brother’s birth, Esch is navigating growing up, finding herself, and what her role within her larger family dynamic will be as they all find themselves living through and on the other side of a reality-altering storm.
Navigate Your Stars by Ward is a shorter work, yet its ability to uplift and inspire resonates beautifully with each turn of its masterfully illustrated pages. Focused on the themes of grit, determination, and self-determination, Ward’s voice ignites readers to strive towards their ambitions. Overall, Ward’s unique perspective as a Black woman storyteller informs her work's ability to help readers see her characters and themselves as resilient and full of agency even if they aren’t immediately aware of that power.
Julian Randall - The Dead Don’t Need Reminding: This work opens in Oxford, Mississippi where I had the opportunity to meet Randall, and where he attended an MFA program that colors the imagery of his work. Although Randal himself is a Chicago native, this story and the larger story of his familial history is set in and given breath by Mississippi. This work provides us with a look into what forces drove the Great Migration and what the people descended from that cultural and geographic shift look like from a contemporary and historical perspective. A mixing of two narratives, Randall’s and his grandfather’s, linked by pop cultural moments, poetry, racial tension, and identity, The Dead Don’t Need Reminding reminds us that despite all the places we may go, we can and should take the time to return home and learn about how we got to where we are.
Kiese Laymon - Heavy: Jackson, Mississippi native and literary powerhouse Laymon’s work is reflective of his upbringing here in “The City of Soul”. Laymon’s memoir speaks to his search for love and acceptance, understanding himself, navigating his relationship with his mother, and dealing with the struggles of addiction. This work immediately drew me in as its themes felt reflective of my own experiences as a native Jacksonian and writer. Although, as stated by the title, this work can be heavy, however, by the end of the read, you realize that by naming your burdens, you can finally accept them and put them to the wayside to focus on yourself, on your work. My favorite quote from Laymon, “the work is in the revision” resounds across the larger themes of his memoir and reminds me that no one immediately picks up a pen or types on a keyboard and creates a pulitzer precise winning work, the same way that a person isn’t suddenly themselves – it takes time and revisiting, a little resting, and a lot of work to finalize who you are and what you want to say. Sometimes, the work is never really done.
Angie Thomas - Concrete Rose: Another Jackson native, Thomas’s novel Concrete Rose is the prequel to her more known work, The Hate You Give, set in the Garden Heights neighborhood. Dealing with themes of masculinity, gang life, and fatherhood, this story of Maverick, the main character, felt reminiscent of the lives of young men from my own neighborhood and upbringing.
Thomas’s candor regarding her troubled upbringing as a youth, seeing scenarios that would leave harrowing imagery, was used as some of the inspiration for her works.
Her ability to humanize characters that others would deem unworthy of compassion and the full scope of what it means to be a person shows us that there is always power in the choices we make, even if it seems that we aren’t left with many options.
Bonus: Dr. Brian Foster - I Don’t Like The Blues: I would be remiss to not include one of the more academically focused works that has informed my love of understanding Mississippi culture and life. Written by undoubtedly one of my favorite scholars and professors during undergrad, this novel analyzes the relationship between Clarksdale locals and the larger blues economy. Often when asked about the blues Black folks will give mixed reviews, we see it as a source of artistic expression and a genre that has been the soundtrack to many of our significant cultural and intrapersonal moments. From juke joints and backroom pubs to family gatherings and public celebrations, the blues has given us all a taste of comfort and disdain. Dr. Foster’s work asks contemporary Mississippians, from the Delta, from Clarksdale, what the blues was, is, and will be.
Click the title or cover image of each work to learn more, or purchase a copy today.
Courtney W. Jones is a native of Jackson, MS, with a lifelong thirst for understanding the ‘why’ behind everything. His work is driven by what he calls Southern curiosity. As a multi-disciplinary scholar and artist, Courtney’s writing style can best be called Mississippi machismo. He fuses lessons from the past with forward-thinking wit and comic irony. With a penchant for nitpicking, Jones’s works, found here at ‘Sipp Talk, highlight his background in Sociology by bringing a human understanding to topics often overlooked by the everyday humming of mundane life.