You're listening to Chapter 10, Returning.

All water has a perfect memory, and is forever trying to get back to where it was.

Tony Morrison, in a 1986 talk given at the New York Public Library.

Music at the New York Public Library. I'm Shaylor Brown.

I'm from the Mississippi Delta.

It's a small town, so I don't usually isolate it to one place because it was in between a lot of places, so I just leave it at the Mississippi Delta.

For me, I think there are two deltas.

And like if I were to Google the Delta, then you get all of this tourist stuff that I did not know existed.

Growing up there my whole life, it's like, what? I never went to that restaurant. I didn't even know that place existed. What? There's a plantation that people come to to enjoy themselves. Like, okay. So there's that Delta. And then there's the Delta where I I grew up where it's really more community-based.

So you might not find it on Google, but there are town celebrations and that's the attraction.

Each town has a homecoming like every year.

And then you have like high school sports.

Like everything is centered around the high school sports and the high school rivalry.

Those things just aren't highlighted a lot when I, when you look for things to do in the Delta or things that make the Delta special.

The community that we build around our festivities are just invisible.

And that feels, it feels like an erasure.

It disregards almost like your existence, like, oh, you know, like almost like you're not happening there.

And so that's just something that as somebody coming back home and trying to use the tools

of now to like search for things, I don't see myself.

The thing about leaving home and coming back after a long time is things are never quite

the same as when you left.

There are obvious differences like new neighbors, new buildings, and construction, and maybe

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