In Search Of Americana

“How did you end up here?” was the question that as a white young Ukrainian girl with an accent I heard a lot working at the front desk of a hotel in Jackson, MS. Fresh out of college and looking forward to accomplishing my American Dream, I accepted the first internship opportunity in the States offered to me. Unlike my local American friends who described Ol’ Miss as nothing more than heat, humidity and fried chicken, I always saw beyond that. But even I wasn’t sure what to expect when one of my coworkers suggested going to a World Catfish Festival in Belzoni, MS. I mean, why not only celebrate ugly looking and plain testing, as for me, fish, but also give the festival such a pompous name?
After a long drive, I was happy to indulge myself in two ingredients of Southern life: soul music and food. I ended up at the fried catfish eating contest while listening to blues musicians on the main stage. I didn’t win it but found out that only plenty of hot sauce makes catfish delicious and worth celebrating.
Soon I faced an unpleasant discovery: that part of Mississippi was still highly segregated. White folks gorged themselves with pork skins and cheered for contestants in Miss Catfish Pageant while all-white Southern Belles paraded in gorgeous dresses. African-American crowd was more reserved and stayed closer to the food trucks.
To get away from the scene I decided to go wandering. After blocks of similar buildings, I stumbled upon a white cute house with “Mama’s Dream World” plaque at the top. When I entered a high-ceilinged room covered with stitchery colorful paintings, it seemed the world became a brighter place. An almost tangible positive energy vibrated from the pieces portraying one-room schoolhouses, a river baptism, or family life. One piece stood out: a tall evergreen tree with nine hearts with initials inside them and one heart in the roots. “Cedar of Lebanon” was stitched under it. The house appeared to be a stitchery museum of Smithsonian-acclaimed artist Ethel Wright Mohamed run by her daughter, and the painting - a “portrait” of her family. Raised in Mississippi by a preacher, Ethel married an immigrant merchant from Lebanon in 1924 and raised 8 children with him while running a general store and making "memory pictures" of their life in Mississippi Delta. Doesn’t it give you a hope that if a Muslim and a white Christian could put their differences aside in Mississippi years ago, perhaps modern day Southerners will finally do the same?