Download or read book Transforming the Appalachian Countryside written by Ronald L. Lewis and published by Univ of North Carolina Press. This book was released on 2000-11-09 with total page 367 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1880, ancient-growth forest still covered two-thirds of West Virginia, but by the 1920s lumbermen had denuded the entire region. Ronald Lewis explores the transformation in these mountain counties precipitated by deforestation. As the only state that lies entirely within the Appalachian region, West Virginia provides an ideal site for studying the broader social impact of deforestation in Appalachia, the South, and the eastern United States. Most of West Virginia was still dominated by a backcountry economy when the industrial transition began. In short order, however, railroads linked remote mountain settlements directly to national markets, hauling away forest products and returning with manufactured goods and modern ideas. Workers from the countryside and abroad swelled new mill towns, and merchants ventured into the mountains to fulfill the needs of the growing population. To protect their massive investments, capitalists increasingly extended control over the state's legal and political systems. Eventually, though, even ardent supporters of industrialization had reason to contemplate the consequences of unregulated exploitation. Once the timber was gone, the mills closed and the railroads pulled up their tracks, leaving behind an environmental disaster and a new class of marginalized rural poor to confront the worst depression in American history.
Download or read book Left Elsewhere written by Elizabeth Catte and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2019-03-12 with total page 130 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An examination of the emerging rural left, from environmentalists blocking pipeline construction to teachers on strike. In Left Elsewhere, volume editor and lead essayist Elizabeth Catte turns a skeptical eye toward “purple” politicians, such as West Virginia Democrat Richard Ojeda, who are hailed by many as the best hope for U.S. progressives outside the urban coasts. By offering a survey of what the left actually looks like outside major urban centers, Catte shows how an emerging rural left is developing new strategies that do not easily fit into typical ideas of liberals, leftists, and Democratic politics. From environmentalists who successfully block pipeline construction to advocates for “radical” health care solutions such as needle exchanges to school teachers who go on strike, these newly energized activists may offer a better path forward for both policy and candidates to represent the needs of poor and working Americans. By engaging activists and scholars outside the coastal bubbles, this collection offers insights into several overlooked areas, including working-class women's activism, victories in new labor struggle (especially in staunchly right-to-work states) and new organizing principles in Jackson, Mississippi—"America's most radical city"—that are bringing about meaningful racial and economic change on the ground. Taken together, the essays in Left Elsewhere show that today's political language is insufficient to convey what's happening in these areas and examine what, if any, coherent set of politics can be assigned to them. Contributors William J. Barber II, Thomas Baxter, Lesly-Marie Buer, Ash-Lee Woodard Henderson, Nancy Isenberg, Elaine C. Kamarck, Michael Kazin, Toussaint Losier, Robin McDowell, Bob Moser, Hugh Ryan, Matt Stoller, Ruy Teixeira, Makani Themba, Jessica Wilkerson
Download or read book Change in Rural Appalachia written by John D. Photiadis and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2016-11-11 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Appalachia is a region in trouble. Even in the more remote coves and hollows, major social and economic changes are disturbing the traditional ways of life. The conditions which have made it a pocket of poverty cannot be easily eradicated; and the rapid changes of recent years have added further severe problems of adjustment which deeply affect the family, church life, education, the folk subculture, and, above all, the individual. Outmigration, psychological dislocation, and cultural alienation are the result. The nine contributing scholars have lived and worked in Appalachia; they know the people and their customs, their problems and their needs. They are thoroughly familiar with the programs now in operation, and are well qualified to evaluate their success or failure in terms of those needs. Furthermore, their findings can be applied to other regions and nations, wherever an isolated group has been abruptly incorporated into the mainstream of society while many of its peculiar problems remain unsolved. Rural Appalachia may in fact be considered a microcosm of the underdeveloped nations of the world; the issues raised here far transcend the importance of a regional study. The essays are grouped according to four general areas of research. The first part deals with the individual in his society; the second with six social institutions—economy, government, family, religion, education, and power structure; the third with methods and objectives of change; and the fourth with the aims of change agencies, particularly the Extension Service of the future. As the tangle of problems, strains, and tensions is explored, the focus remains steadily upon immediate and longterm effects on the individual. The book is dedicated to "the professional field workers in programs of directed change . . . struggling on the one hand with ideas, theories, and conceptual innovations, and on the other hand with the immediate realities of the local situations."
Download or read book Challenge and Change in Appalachia written by Jess Stoddart and published by University Press of Kentucky. This book was released on 2002-12-01 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: " The first and most successful rural social settlement school in the United States lies at the forks of Troublesome Creek in Knott County, Kentucky. Since its founding in 1902 by May Stone and Katherine Pettit, the Hindman Settlement School has received accolades for the quality of its education, health, and community services that have measurably improved the lives of people in the region. Challenge and Change in Appalachia is the story of a groundbreaking center for education that transformed a community. The School's farms and extension work brought modern methods to the area. At the same time, the School encouraged preservation of the region's crafts and music. Today, unique programs for dyslexic children, work in adult education, and cultural heritage activities make the School a model for rural redevelopment.
Download or read book The Cancer Crisis in Appalachia written by Nathan L. Vanderford and published by University Press of Kentucky. This book was released on 2020-04-07 with total page 136 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Kentucky has more cancer diagnoses and cancer-related deaths than any other state in the nation, and most of these cases are concentrated in the fifty-four counties that constitute the Appalachian region of the commonwealth. These high rankings can be attributed to factors such as elevated smoking rates, unhealthy eating habits, lower levels of education, and limited access to health care. What is lost in the statistics is just how life-changing cancer can be—something that editors Nathan L. Vanderford, Lauren Hudson, and Chris Prichard have endeavored to address. The Cancer Crisis in Appalachia features essays written by a group of twenty high school and five undergraduate students, all of whom are residents of Kentucky's Appalachian region and are participants in the University of Kentucky Markey Cancer Center's Appalachian Career Training in Oncology (ACTION) program, which is funded by the National Cancer Institute's Youth Enjoy Science Program. These authentic and candid student essays detail the effects of cancer diagnoses and deaths on individuals, families, friends, and communities, and proclaim these cases as more than nameless statistics. The authors shed light on personal cancer stories in hopes of inspiring readers to avoid cancer-risk behaviors, get involved with cancer-prevention initiatives, give generously, and uplift cancer patients and their loved ones.
Download or read book Appalachian Fall written by Jeff Young and published by S&S/Simon Element. This book was released on 2020-08-11 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A searing, on-the-ground examination of the collapsing coal industry—and the communities left behind—in the midst of economic and environmental crisis. Despite fueling a century of American progress, the people at the heart of coal country are being left behind, suffering from unemployment, the opioid epidemic, and environmental crises often at greater rates than anywhere else in the country. But what if Appalachia’s troubles are just a taste of what the future holds for all of us? Appalachian Fall tells the captivating true story of coal communities on the leading edge of change. A group of local reporters known as the Ohio Valley ReSource shares the real-world impact these changes have had on what was once the heart and soul of America. Including stories like: -The miners’ strike in Harlan County after their company suddenly went bankrupt, bouncing their paychecks -The farmers tilling former mining ground for new cash crops like hemp -The activists working to fight mountaintop removal and bring clean energy jobs to the region -And the mothers mourning the loss of their children to overdose and despair In the wake of the controversial bestseller Hillbilly Elegy, Appalachian Fall addresses what our country owes to a region that provided fuel for a century and what it risks if it stands by watching as the region, and its people, collapse.
Download or read book Appalachian Reckoning written by Anthony Harkins and published by . This book was released on 2019 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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
Download or read book A History of Appalachia written by Richard B. Drake and published by University Press of Kentucky. This book was released on 2003-09-01 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Richard Drake has skillfully woven together the various strands of the Appalachian experience into a sweeping whole. Touching upon folk traditions, health care, the environment, higher education, the role of blacks and women, and much more, Drake offers a compelling social history of a unique American region. The Appalachian region, extending from Alabama in the South up to the Allegheny highlands of Pennsylvania, has historically been characterized by its largely rural populations, rich natural resources that have fueled industry in other parts of the country, and the strong and wild, undeveloped land. The rugged geography of the region allowed Native American societies, especially the Cherokee, to flourish. Early white settlers tended to favor a self-sufficient approach to farming, contrary to the land grabbing and plantation building going on elsewhere in the South. The growth of a market economy and competition from other agricultural areas of the country sparked an economic decline of the region's rural population at least as early as 1830. The Civil War and the sometimes hostile legislation of Reconstruction made life even more difficult for rural Appalachians. Recent history of the region is marked by the corporate exploitation of resources. Regional oil, gas, and coal had attracted some industry even before the Civil War, but the postwar years saw an immense expansion of American industry, nearly all of which relied heavily on Appalachian fossil fuels, particularly coal. What was initially a boon to the region eventually brought financial disaster to many mountain people as unsafe working conditions and strip mining ravaged the land and its inhabitants. A History of Appalachia also examines pockets of urbanization in Appalachia. Chemical, textile, and other industries have encouraged the development of urban areas. At the same time, radio, television, and the internet provide residents direct links to cultures from all over the world. The author looks at the process of urbanization as it belies commonly held notions about the region's rural character.
Download or read book Ailing in Place written by Michele Morrone and published by Ohio University Press. This book was released on 2020-02-28 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Ailing in Place, Michele Morrone explores the relationship between environmental conditions in Appalachia and health outcomes that are too often ascribed to individual choices only. She applies quantitative data to observations from environmental health professionals to frame the ways in which the environment, as a social determinant of health, leads to health disparities in Appalachian communities. These examples—these stories of place—trace the impacts of water quality, waste disposal, and natural resource extraction on the health and quality of life of Appalachian people. Public health is inextricably linked to place. Environmental conditions such as contaminated water, unsafe food, and polluted air are as important as culture, community, and landscape in characterizing a place and determining the health outcomes of the people who live there. In some places, the state of the environment is a consequence of historical activities related to natural resources and cultural practices. In others, political decisions to achieve short-term economic objectives are made with little consideration of long-term public health consequences.
Download or read book F ckface written by Leah Hampton and published by Macmillan + ORM. This book was released on 2020-07-14 with total page 178 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Named a Best Book of 2020 by Slate, Electric Literature, and PopMatters F*ckface is a brassy, bighearted debut collection of twelve short stories about rurality, corpses, honeybee collapse, and illicit sex in post-coal Appalachia. The twelve stories in this knockout collection—some comedic, some tragic, many both at once—examine the interdependence between rural denizens and their environment. A young girl, desperate for a way out of her small town, finds support in an unlikely place. A ranger working along the Blue Ridge Parkway realizes that the dark side of the job, the all too frequent discovery of dead bodies, has taken its toll on her. Haunted by his past, and his future, a tech sergeant reluctantly spends a night with his estranged parents before being deployed to Afghanistan. Nearing fifty and facing new medical problems, a woman wonders if her short stint at the local chemical plant is to blame. A woman takes her husband’s research partner on a day trip to her favorite place on earth, Dollywood, and briefly imagines a different life. In the vein of Bonnie Jo Campbell and Lee Smith, Leah Hampton writes poignantly and honestly about a legendary place that’s rapidly changing. She takes us deep inside the lives of the women and men of Appalachia while navigating the realities of modern life with wit, bite, and heart.
Download or read book Appalachia Revisited written by William Schumann and published by University Press of Kentucky. This book was released on 2016-07-22 with total page 318 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Known for its dramatic beauty and valuable natural resources, Appalachia has undergone significant technological, economic, political, and environmental changes in recent decades. Home to distinctive traditions and a rich cultural heritage, the area is also plagued by poverty, insufficient healthcare and education, drug addiction, and ecological devastation. This complex and controversial region has been examined by generations of scholars, activists, and civil servants -- all offering an array of perspectives on Appalachia and its people. In this innovative volume, editors William Schumann and Rebecca Adkins Fletcher assemble both scholars and nonprofit practitioners to examine how Appalachia is perceived both within and beyond its borders. Together, they investigate the region's transformation and analyze how it is currently approached as a topic of academic inquiry. Arguing that interdisciplinary and comparative place-based studies increasingly matter, the contributors investigate numerous topics, including race and gender, environmental transformation, university-community collaborations, cyber identities, fracking, contemporary activist strategies, and analyze Appalachia in the context of local-to-global change. A pathbreaking study analyzing continuity and change in the region through a global framework, Appalachia Revisited is essential reading for scholars and students as well as for policymakers, community and charitable organizers, and those involved in community development.
Download or read book Hill Women written by Cassie Chambers and published by Ballantine Books. This book was released on 2021-01-12 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: After rising from poverty to earn two Ivy League degrees, an Appalachian lawyer pays tribute to the strong “hill women” who raised and inspired her, and whose values have the potential to rejuvenate a struggling region. “Destined to be compared to Hillbilly Elegy and Educated.”—BookPage (starred review) “A gritty, warm love letter to Appalachian communities and the resourceful women who lead them.”—Slate Nestled in the Appalachian mountains, Owsley County, Kentucky, is one of the poorest places in the country. Buildings are crumbling as tobacco farming and coal mining decline. But strong women find creative ways to subsist in the hills. Through the women who raised her, Cassie Chambers traces her path out of and back into the Kentucky mountains. Chambers’s Granny was a child bride who rose before dawn every morning to raise seven children. Granny’s daughter, Ruth—the hardest-working tobacco farmer in the county—stayed on the family farm, while Wilma—the sixth child—became the first in the family to graduate from high school. Married at nineteen and pregnant with Cassie a few months later, Wilma beat the odds to finish college. She raised her daughter to think she could move mountains, like the ones that kept her safe but also isolated from the larger world. Cassie would spend much of her childhood with Granny and Ruth in the hills of Owsley County. With her “hill women” values guiding her, she went on to graduate from Harvard Law. But while the Ivy League gave her opportunities, its privileged world felt far from her reality, and she moved home to help rural Kentucky women by providing free legal services. Appalachian women face issues from domestic violence to the opioid crisis, but they are also keeping their towns together in the face of a system that continually fails them. With nuance and heart, Chambers breaks down the myth of the hillbilly and illuminates a region whose poor communities, especially women, can lead it into the future.
Download or read book Change in Rural Appalachia written by John D. Photiadis and published by University of Pennsylvania Press Anniversary Collection. This book was released on 1970 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Nine scholars consider the impact of social and economic change on rural Appalachia. As the tangle of problems, strains, and tensions is explored, the focus of this volume remains steadily upon immediate and longterm effects on the individual.
Download or read book Population Change and Rural Society written by William A. Kandel and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2006-01-13 with total page 500 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book contains the latest research on social and economic trends occurring in rural America. It provides a unique focus on rural demography and the interaction between population dynamics and local social and economic change. It is also the first volume on rural population that exploits data from Census 2000 The book highlights major themes transforming contemporary rural areas and each is examined with an expanded overview and case study.
Download or read book Worlds Apart written by Cynthia M. Duncan and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2015-01-13 with total page 329 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First published in 1999, Worlds Apart examined the nature of poverty through the stories of real people in three remote rural areas of the United States: New England, Appalachia, and the Mississippi Delta. In this new edition, Duncan returns to her original research, interviewing some of the same people as well as some new key informants. Duncan provides powerful new insights into the dynamics of poverty, politics, and community change. "Duncan, through in-depth investigation and interviews, concludes that only a strong civic culture, a sense among citizens of community and the need to serve that community, can truly address poverty. . . . Moving and troubling. Duncan has created a remarkable study of the persistent patterns of poverty and power."—Kirkus Reviews "The descriptions of rural poverty in Worlds Apart are interesting and read almost like a novel."—Choice
Download or read book Mountain Sisters written by Helen M. Lewis and published by University Press of Kentucky. This book was released on 2021-12-14 with total page 433 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Monica Appleby and Helen Lewis reveal the largely untold story of women who stood up to the Church and joined Appalachians in their struggle for social justice. Their poignant story of how faith, compassion, and persistence overcame obstacles to progress in Appalachia is a fascinating example of how a collaborative and creative learning community fosters strong voices. Mountain Sisters is a prophetic first-person account of the history of American Catholicism, the war on poverty, and the influence of the turbulent 1960s on the cultural and religious communities of Appalachia. Founded in 1941, The Glenmary Sisters embraced a calling to serve rural Appalachian communities where few Catholics resided. The sisters, many of them seeking alternatives to the choices available to most women during this time, zealously pursued their duties but soon became frustrated with the rules and restrictions of the Church. Outmoded doctrine—even styles of dress—made it difficult for them to interact with the very people they hoped to help. In 1967, after many unsuccessful attempts to persuade the Church to ease its requirements, some seventy Sisters left the security of convent life. Over forty of these women formed a secular service group, FOCIS (Federation of Communities in Service). Mountain Sisters is their story.
Download or read book Remaking Appalachia written by Nicholas F. Stump and published by West Virginia University Press. This book was released on 2021-04 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A critical legal scholar uses feminist and environmental theory to sketch alternate futures for Appalachia. Environmental law has failed spectacularly to protect Appalachia from the ravages of liberal capitalism, and from extractive industries in particular. Remaking Appalachia chronicles such failures, but also puts forth hopeful paths for truly radical change. Remaking Appalachia begins with an account of how, over a century ago, laws governing environmental and related issues proved fruitless against the rising power of coal and other industries. Key legal regimes were, in fact, explicitly developed to support favored industrial growth. Aided by law, industry succeeded in maximizing profits not just through profound exploitation of Appalachia's environment but also through subordination along lines of class, gender, and race. After chronicling such failures and those of liberal development strategies in the region, Stump explores true system change beyond law "reform." Ecofeminism and ecosocialism undergird this discussion, which involves bottom-up approaches to transcending capitalism that are coordinated from local to global scales.
