Alysia Steele – Preserving the Last Cotton Stories
Alysia Steele has built her career on one core belief, stories matter.Not just the well-known ones. Not just the ones in textbooks. But the everyday stories that shape families, communities, and memory.
Her latest project centers on cotton. Not as a crop alone. But as a lived experience. Over the past several years, Steele has been traveling across Mississippi, collecting oral histories from men and women who represent the last generation to handpick cotton. The project, co-authored with her husband Bobby, is still in progress. They are currently seeking about a dozen more interviews.
“The stories always led back to the fields,” Steele says. “But they weren’t really about cotton. They were about life.”
How the cotton book began
The idea took shape after the release of her first book, Delta Jewels. At speaking events, people thanked her for preserving the voices of Black church mothers. Then they would lean in and say, “You should write about cotton.” They’d tear pieces of a program booklet and write, “I want to talk about cotton. Please call me.” No name on the paper, just a phone number.
It didn’t matter who was speaking. Black. White. Young. Old. Each had a memory connected to the fields.
“It occurred to me that a crop that once divided people might also bring them together through conversation,” Steele says.
Cotton shaped education, family structures, religion, food, race relations, and economic opportunity. Every interview uncovered layers beneath the surface.
Interviewing the last generation
The Cotton Book documents lived experience. Not theory. Not headlines. Personal memory. Some interviewees describe long days under unforgiving heat. Others recall reciting poems while picking to pass the time. Some worked entire seasons to afford a single pair of shoes or to buy snacks to eat while working. Others remember the social codes and power structures that surrounded the fields.
Socio-economics. Race. Gender. Family. Labor. “These themes bubble up in every conversation,” Steele says. “They intersect. They always intersect.”
Her husband Bobby now joins her on interviews because she was threatened - leave the stories alone, was the gist. He records video, researches archival materials, and asks questions that expand the dialogue. What began as her project has grown into a shared one.
“We realized this work was bigger than one perspective,” she says.
Facing resistance and moving forward
Not everyone has been comfortable with the subject. At one point, Steele was cautioned against digging too deeply into cotton history. She continued anyway.
“That moment made me think about why the truth makes people uneasy,” she says. “It confirmed the importance of doing the work carefully and respectfully.”
For Steele, the project is not about reopening wounds. It is about documenting memory before it disappears.
“History lives in people,” she says. “If we don’t record it now, we lose it.”
Themes emerging from the field
So far, seven major themes have emerged:
Education
Labor
Race relations
Religion
Food
Socio-economics
Family
Each interview adds nuance. Each story complicates assumptions. The book will include voices from all walks of life, reflecting the shared and divided histories tied to cotton.
“We let people talk about whatever they want to share,” Steele says. “That’s where the depth comes from.”
A work still in progress
The Cotton Book is nearly halfway complete. More interviews are scheduled. More perspectives are needed.
The goal is simple, preserve living history.
“Cotton means different things to different people,” Steele says. “But when we sit down and talk about it, we find common ground in unexpected ways, and that’s not to hide the ugly truth either. The reality is, people were trying to live another day, another week, and another year.”
For Steele, this project is a continuation of her life’s work. Structure. Patience. Listening. Documentation.
Big ideas, she believes, do not need hype. They need commitment.
And the stories are still waiting to be told.
