MY MISSISSIPPI [Inscribed by David Rae Morris to Shelby Coffey III]

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.