Where the Wild Things Grow

Outside/In

NHPR

Society & Culture, Documentary, Natural Sciences, Nature, Science

4.7 • 1.5K Ratings

🗓️ 29 May 2025

⏱️ 29 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Growing up, Kiese Laymon thought of himself as a city kid. But he spent his childhood with a foot in two worlds: his mom’s house in the capital city of Jackson, Mississippi and his grandma’s house in a rural country town. It wasn’t until Kiese left Mississippi that he came to understand that this question of city versus country actually meant a lot more. It carries a lot of baggage: the tensions between north and south, tectonic historical forces, and the contradictions of life in Mississippi. In this episode, our producer Justine Paradis sits down with writer Kiese Laymon for a conversation on this question of country versus city, what that has to do with the history of Black life in this country, and the story of Kiese’s first children’s picture book, his latest in a lifelong exploration of a complicated love of Mississippi. Featuring Kiese Laymon. Produced by Justine Paradis. For full credits and transcript, visit outsideinradio.org. SUPPORT To share your questions and feedback with Outside/In, call the show’s hotline and leave us a voicemail. The number is 1-844-GO-OTTER. No question is too serious or too silly. Outside/In is made possible with listener support. Click here to become a sustaining member of Outside/In. Follow Outside/In on Instagram, BlueSky, Tiktok, or join our private discussion group on Facebook. LINKS Kiese Laymon’s first children’s book, City Summer, Country Summer. If you’d like to read more by Kiese, we recommend “Da Art of Storytellin’ (A Prequel)”, his essay about Outkast, his grandmother, and stank. (Oxford American) Kiese adapted City Summer, Country Summer from this 2020 prose-poem essay. (New York Times) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, this is Outside In, a show where curiosity and the natural world collide.
0:05.0	I'm Nate Hedgy.
0:06.1	There's a saying out there that goes like this.
0:09.0	There are two kinds of people in the world.
0:11.5	The ones who think there are two kinds of people in the world, and then the ones who know better.
0:18.9	Anyway, perhaps one of the easiest and most common ways of dividing up the world is this.
0:26.1	There are city people and country people.
0:31.0	Sometimes these are labels that we adopt ourselves.
0:33.4	I'm more of like a country, rural mountain boy, if I'm being honest.
0:36.7	And sometimes these are labels that we use to describe others.
0:40.3	This divide is even the basis of an ancient children's story.
0:44.6	Town Mouse, Country Mouse, from Aesop's Fables, literally thousands of years old.
0:52.9	But some people live with a foot in both worlds.
0:57.6	All right.
0:57.9	My name is Kias A. Laman.
0:59.7	I'm a writer born and raised in Jackson, Mississippi.
1:03.5	Jackson isn't a massive city, but the metropolitan area is home to 20% of the state's
1:09.4	entire population.
1:11.1	And to someone growing up in that part of Mississippi, it was big.
1:14.7	Did you think of yourself as a city kid growing up?
1:17.3	That's our producer, Justine Paradise.
1:19.5	I love that question.
	...

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