On The Ground
For those who chose to stay.
Hi Folks—
A couple of quick announcements before we delve into this week’s newsletter:
I have a new piece out in The Bitter Southerner today about the effects of climate change in the South and how Charleston’s artists are mobilizing and responding. Thank you to all the wonderful artists, activists, and organizers who spoke with me for this piece— you are incredible, and I am so proud of this piece.
I also want to take a moment to shout out the release of my wildly talented friend Nia J’s EP, Rabbit Hole, which I got to attend the release party for this past weekend. Ever since moving back South, I’ve been impossibly lucky to find myself surrounded by a supportive group of talented artists, and seeing Nia step into her own and shine is beautiful. As is this EP. I highly recommend taking a listen and following Nia now before she becomes massively famous, as she is absolutely bound to.
Lastly, as always, if you have a story of rural America, email us at goodfolksonly@gmail.com. We’re always looking to feature new voices, and stories can take any form you see fit— we welcome written, audio, visual, multimedia, recipes, etc. As much as a newsletter to discuss rural topics, Good Folk also serves as an archive of rural storytelling. Join us.
Today’s newsletter is for a specific group of people: those who stayed. Or those who left, and then returned. Or those who had never been here, but came, and never left. Those who chose to stay, despite everything, despite all the messages that say you have to leave if you are to be anything. You are already something. Know that.
Last week, in light of the Texas abortion news, I saw the following tweet in response:
We’re going to get into the actual tweet in a second, but first, I invite you to take a look at some of the replies. Many are congratulatory, thanking them for taking a stand and calling for others in Hollywood to do the same. But I want to talk about the responses from the filmmakers who are based in Texas, who are there, on the ground, working to try to turn things around. Some of the replies from local filmmakers, artists, and journalists include:
“Please don’t do that. I am in the film industry in Texas. The Republicans don’t represent our industry and we need work.”
“Please reconsider. As a freelance filmmaker here in TX, if there’s no work here, there’s no way I or others can stay and continue to vote to turn this state blue. We’re so close. We need more people who will do the right thing to move here and vote.”
“Please donate to Planned Parenthood and use your platform to speak out in other ways. Fewer Dems in Texas is not the answer, nor is isolating those of us left here on the ground who don’t have the privilege to pick and choose where we work.”
Other replies that I have strong feelings about:
“We appreciate your sacrifice. We will not let it be for naught.”
“A company my husband worked for for 30 years relocated to Texas. He retired instead of putting up stakes there. The company contributed to politicians supporting the insurrection. I will never step foot in Texas. This, I can promise you.”
“You’re making a statement. Good move. Now every Texas woman with the means to should move. Maine is lovely. A bit chillier in the winter but we have a great Governor who’s done well keeping us covid safe. And an electric grid that works.”
There are many things I want to discuss here: how blame is being transferred from politicians onto individuals, the way this reeks of holier-than-thou mentalities so often thrown against those in the rural South, how so much of this is the fault of neoliberalism and party politics, the frustration of virtue signaling, and most importantly: the point on those on the ground, who don’t have the choice of where they work. Who don’t have the choice of where they are from, or where opportunity can best be found for them. Who, for many reasons, are unable to leave, or choose not to.
Three years ago, I was sitting in a cafe in Kathmandu, speaking with a man who had incredible accolades, had traveled and taught all around the world, and had decided to return to Nepal, his home country, to work there. I remember asking him why. I could understand the need to leave; I had done that my whole life after all, never telling people where I was from, hiding my accent, counting down the days until I could get somewhere where I thought people would finally be able to understand me. But I struggled to understand why people chose to return.
It’s great that everyone wants to go to other places and try to help, he told me. But the work has to start in your own community first. You need to begin on the ground, in your own community. That’s where you can make a real difference.
That stuck deeply with me. So much so that despite a whole lifetime planning to leave and my actual exodus, I took the first chance I could to come back South and work in the arts in my community. In doing so, I have found all kinds of diverse, talented, and passionate individuals already working on the ground here, often with little recognition compared to those doing similar work in other areas. In my mind, choosing to come back to do the work you wish to do is one of the most difficult things. You will not find much support. If you have left before returning, you will especially field the question of, why come back at all? And you will have to prepare yourself to answer.
The point I wish to make here is that there are terrible lawmakers all over the country. There are corrupt politicians in Texas, and in New York, and California, and Ohio, and South Carolina, and Oregon. There are good and bad things everywhere. There are issues that are systematic and so deeply ingrained in this country that it is difficult, almost impossible at times, to imagine a different way. But there is a different way, and it doesn’t look like a mass exodus of all the places we deem to be terrible on a cultural, social scale (and by the way, if you feel that the rural South is all terrible, I invite you to think, really think, about where that perception and judgement came from, and to do the work of beginning to unlearn it). The new way looks like the voices of these places coming forward and speaking up for change. Telling their stories. Building a vision of rural America as those here know it to be: a place that is deeply flawed, yes, like anywhere else, but a place that is also full of love and joy and hope and creativity and connection. A place that is held together by those who love it and choose to believe it can be better.
What I would like to see instead of this virtue signaling that only serves to reinforce the divide between places deemed as moral and just and those deemed as backwards and dispensable is community support. Individual grants. Filmmaker funds. Storytelling that empowers individuals from these communities to tell their own narratives rather than outsiders venturing in in hopes of a shock piece. The realization that you are not made simply by a place, but by the people who surround you within it. Recognition for the artists and activists who don’t want to turn their backs on their hometowns just because they’ve been told that’s what they must do to make it in their career field, to mean something. I want to stop answering the question, but why would you ever leave New York? and start answering telling you about the novels my students have written over the last year, stories of queer love and magical fantasy worlds hidden in the Carolina forests, poems of protests and identity and struggle. Visions of hope and healing. I want to write pieces that show readers how to love yourself even if you don’t love where you’re from, I want to make documentaries that bring to life the worlds and communities I am lucky to have integrated into. I want to stop feeling isolated by mainstream creative communities because instead of moving to New York I moved away from it, and while that decision is one of the best I ever made— both for my artistic practice and my own mental health— it seems to be baffling to anyone I tell this story to. I want people to stop believing that turning their backs on places they disagree with is a worthy sacrifice, or even a sacrifice at all. There is no greater good that will come out of this. Should we go down that path, it will look like those with means leaving everyone else behind in the dust to fight their own battles, or fall to the political powers that be, with no empathy or understanding that not everyone wants to have to leave to live. And the choice should not be living or being left behind. That is not community action, that is not protest, and it does not make you a good person.
Your prompt this week is to think about your hometown. Choose one thing about it that stands out to you, good or bad, and write about.
That’s all for today, folks. Thanks for sticking around.
— Spencer
Adia Victoria is probably my favorite artist at the moment. I have never been this excited for an album, nor have I ever related to music like this. I'm going back South / Down to Carolina, she sings in Magnolia Blues, the single from her upcoming album, A Southern Gothic. I'm gonna plant myself / Under a magnolia / I'm gonna let that dirt / Do its work / I'm gonna plant myself / Under a magnolia, a magnolia…