My Appalachia

My Appalachia PDF Author: Sidney Saylor Reynolds
Publisher: University Press of Kentucky
ISBN: 0813145678
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 260

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Book Description
"My family lived as far back in the hollers as it was possible to go in Bell County, Kentucky. Dad worked in the timber woods and at a sawmill, when there was employment to be found. We ate what we grew on the place or could glean from the hillsides. Just about everything was made by hand. We had little contact with people outside the region." Sidney Saylor Farr grew up in the mountains of southeastern Kentucky, the eldest of ten children. Her devotion to her family led her to accept heavy responsibilities from a very young age: at three, she remembers being put in charge of her baby sister while her parents worked in the corn field. At the age of twelve, Farr was forced to leave school to care for her ailing mother and younger siblings. Although she did not often have time to pursue her own goals, life in the mountains nourished and shaped Farr and the writer she would become. Her great-grandmother was a master storyteller, and stories passed down from generation to generation helped define her family history and fueled her imagination. Her Aunt Dellie, a voracious reader, received discarded books from the Pineville library, and as she shared these volumes with young Sidney, she opened the world to her eager niece. Farr's intense determination compelled her to find her own path and gave her the strength to become one of the most influential figures in Appalachian letters, nurturing other young writers who wanted to document the region's particular way of life. Although living in Appalachia was difficult—many people of Farr's generation left the mountains for good—she persisted through countless challenges, including poverty, discrimination, and personal loss. Farr managed to thrive despite these adversities, educating herself, raising two sons, and becoming a voice for her family, community, and culture. In My Appalachia, Farr shares the stories of her struggles and triumphs to create a vivid picture of a culture as enduring as the mountains. Composed of a rich mix of folklore, family history, and spiritual and intellectual exploration, Farr's deft and gentle storytelling reveals the beauty of life in Appalachia.

My Appalachia

My Appalachia PDF Author: Sidney Saylor Reynolds
Publisher: University Press of Kentucky
ISBN: 0813145678
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 260

Get Book Here

Book Description
"My family lived as far back in the hollers as it was possible to go in Bell County, Kentucky. Dad worked in the timber woods and at a sawmill, when there was employment to be found. We ate what we grew on the place or could glean from the hillsides. Just about everything was made by hand. We had little contact with people outside the region." Sidney Saylor Farr grew up in the mountains of southeastern Kentucky, the eldest of ten children. Her devotion to her family led her to accept heavy responsibilities from a very young age: at three, she remembers being put in charge of her baby sister while her parents worked in the corn field. At the age of twelve, Farr was forced to leave school to care for her ailing mother and younger siblings. Although she did not often have time to pursue her own goals, life in the mountains nourished and shaped Farr and the writer she would become. Her great-grandmother was a master storyteller, and stories passed down from generation to generation helped define her family history and fueled her imagination. Her Aunt Dellie, a voracious reader, received discarded books from the Pineville library, and as she shared these volumes with young Sidney, she opened the world to her eager niece. Farr's intense determination compelled her to find her own path and gave her the strength to become one of the most influential figures in Appalachian letters, nurturing other young writers who wanted to document the region's particular way of life. Although living in Appalachia was difficult—many people of Farr's generation left the mountains for good—she persisted through countless challenges, including poverty, discrimination, and personal loss. Farr managed to thrive despite these adversities, educating herself, raising two sons, and becoming a voice for her family, community, and culture. In My Appalachia, Farr shares the stories of her struggles and triumphs to create a vivid picture of a culture as enduring as the mountains. Composed of a rich mix of folklore, family history, and spiritual and intellectual exploration, Farr's deft and gentle storytelling reveals the beauty of life in Appalachia.

Another Appalachia

Another Appalachia PDF Author: Neema Avashia
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781952271427
Category : Cross Lanes (W. Va.)
Languages : en
Pages : 168

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Book Description
"Examines both the roots and the resonance of Neema Avashia's identity as a queer desi Appalachian woman. With lyric and narrative explorations of foodways, religion, sports, standards of beauty, social media, and gun culture"--

Dorie

Dorie PDF Author: Florence Cope Bush
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780870497261
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 242

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Book Description
Dorie's story begins with her childhood on an isolated mountain farm, where we see first-hand how her parents combined back-breaking labor with intense personal pride to produce everything their family needed--from food and clothing to tools and toys--from the land. Lumber companies began to invade the mountains, and Dorie's family took advantage of the financial opportunities offered by the lumber industry, not realizing that in giving up their lands they were also letting go of a way of life. Along with their machinery, the lumber companies brought in many young men, one of whom, Fred Cope, became Dorie's husband. After the lumber companies stripped the mountains of their timber, outsiders set the area aside as a national park, requiring Dorie, now married with a family of her own, to move outside of her beloved mountains.

My Appalachia

My Appalachia PDF Author: Rebecca Caudill
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Appalachian Region, Southern
Languages : en
Pages : 104

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Book Description
The author, who grew up there, contrasts life in Appalachia, before the mines came, with life in Appalachia now, showing how and why it has become a poverty-stricken area.

Appalachian Reckoning

Appalachian Reckoning PDF Author: Anthony Harkins
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781946684790
Category : Appalachian Region
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
In Hillbilly elegy, J.D. Vance described how his family moved from poverty to an upwardly mobile clan while navigating the collective demons of the past. The book has come to define Appalachia for much of the nation. This collection of essays is a retort, at turns rigorous, critical, angry, and hopeful, to the long shadow cast over the region and its imagining. But it also moves beyond Vance's book to allow Appalachians to tell their own diverse and complex stories of a place that is at once culturally rich and economically distressed, unique and typically American. -- adapted from back cover

Appalachia on Our Mind

Appalachia on Our Mind PDF Author: Henry D. Shapiro
Publisher: UNC Press Books
ISBN: 1469617242
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 399

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Book Description
Appalachia on Our Mind is not a history of Appalachia. It is rather a history of the American idea of Appalachia. The author argues that the emergence of this idea has little to do with the realities of mountain life but was the result of a need to reconcile the "otherness" of Appalachia, as decribed by local-color writers, tourists, and home missionaries, with assumptions about the nature of America and American civilization. Between 1870 and 1900, it became clear that the existence of the "strange land and peculiar people" of the southern mountains challenged dominant notions about the basic homogeneity of the American people and the progress of the United States toward achiving a uniform national civilization. Some people attempted to explain Appalachian otherness as normal and natural -- no exception to the rule of progress. Others attempted the practical integration of Appalachia into America through philanthropic work. In the twentieth century, however, still other people began questioning their assumptions about the characteristics of American civilization itself, ultimately defining Appalachia as a region in a nation of regions and the mountaineers as a people in a nation of peoples. In his skillful examination of the "invention" of the idea of Appalachia and its impact on American thought and action during the early twentieth century, Mr. Shapiro analyzes the following: the "discovery" of Appalachia as a field for fiction by the local-color writers and as a field for benevolent work by the home missionaries of the northern Protestant churches; the emergence of the "problem" of Appalachia and attempts to solve it through explanation and social action; the articulation of a regionalist definition of Appalachia and the establishment of instituions that reinforced that definition; the impact of that regionalistic definition of Appalachia on the conduct of systematic benevolence, expecially in the context of the debate over child-labor restriction and the transformation of philanthropy into community work; and the attempt to discover the bases for an indigenous mountain culture in handicrafts, folksong, and folkdance.

A is for Appalachia

A is for Appalachia PDF Author: Linda Hager Pack
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780813125565
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 44

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Book Description
An alphabet book featuring words about Appalachian culture, plus additional stories and facts, a glossary, and a list of places to visit in the region.

Appalachia

Appalachia PDF Author: John Alexander Williams
Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press
ISBN: 0807860522
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 494

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Book Description
Interweaving social, political, environmental, economic, and popular history, John Alexander Williams chronicles four and a half centuries of the Appalachian past. Along the way, he explores Appalachia's long-contested boundaries and the numerous, often contradictory images that have shaped perceptions of the region as both the essence of America and a place apart. Williams begins his story in the colonial era and describes the half-century of bloody warfare as migrants from Europe and their American-born offspring fought and eventually displaced Appalachia's Native American inhabitants. He depicts the evolution of a backwoods farm-and-forest society, its divided and unhappy fate during the Civil War, and the emergence of a new industrial order as railroads, towns, and extractive industries penetrated deeper and deeper into the mountains. Finally, he considers Appalachia's fate in the twentieth century, when it became the first American region to suffer widespread deindustrialization, and examines the partial renewal created by federal intervention and a small but significant wave of in-migration. Throughout the book, a wide range of Appalachian voices enlivens the analysis and reminds us of the importance of storytelling in the ways the people of Appalachia define themselves and their region.

What You are Getting Wrong about Appalachia

What You are Getting Wrong about Appalachia PDF Author: Elizabeth Catte
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780998904146
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
In 2016, headlines declared Appalachia ground zero for America's "forgotten tribe" of white working class voters. Journalists flocked to the region to extract sympathetic profiles of families devastated by poverty, abandoned by establishment politics, and eager to consume cheap campaign promises. What You Are Getting Wrong About Appalachia is a frank assessment of America's recent fascination with the people and problems of the region. The book analyzes trends in contemporary writing on Appalachia, presents a brief history of Appalachia with an eye toward unpacking Appalachian stereotypes, and provides examples of writing, art, and policy created by Appalachians as opposed to for Appalachians. The book offers a must-needed insider's perspective on the region.

Twilight in Hazard

Twilight in Hazard PDF Author: Alan Maimon
Publisher: Melville House
ISBN: 1612198856
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 304

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Book Description
“Twilight in Hazard paints a more nuanced portrait of Appalachia than Vance did...[Maimon] eviscerates Vance's bestseller with stiletto precision.” —Associated Press From investigative reporter and Pulitzer Prize finalist Alan Maimon comes the story of how a perfect storm of events has had a devastating impact on life in small town Appalachia, and on the soul of a shaken nation . . . When Alan Maimon got the assignment in 2000 to report on life in rural Eastern Kentucky, his editor at the Louisville Courier-Journal told him to cover the region “like a foreign correspondent would.” And indeed, when Maimon arrived in Hazard, Kentucky fresh off a reporting stint for the New York Times’s Berlin bureau, he felt every bit the outsider. He had landed in a place in the vice grip of ecological devastation and a corporate-made opioid epidemic—a place where vote-buying and drug-motivated political assassinations were the order of the day. While reporting on the intense religious allegiances, the bitter, bareknuckled political rivalries, and the faltering attempts to emerge from a century-long coal-based economy, Maimon learns that everything—and nothing—you have heard about the region is true. And far from being a foreign place, it is a region whose generations-long struggles are driven by quintessentially American forces. Resisting the easy cliches, Maimon’s Twilight in Hazard gives us a profound understanding of the region from his years of careful reporting. It is both a powerful chronicle of a young reporter’s immersion in a place, and of his return years later—this time as the husband of a Harlan County coal miner’s daughter—to find the area struggling with its identity and in the thrall of Trumpism as a political ideology. Twilight in Hazard refuses to mythologize Central Appalachia. It is a plea to move past the fixation on coal, and a reminder of the true costs to democracy when the media retreats from places of rural distress. It is an intimate portrait of a people staring down some of the most pernicious forces at work in America today while simultaneously being asked: How could you let this happen to yourselves? Twilight in Hazard instead tells the more riveting, noirish, and sometimes bitingly humorous story of how we all let this happen.