Download or read book At Home in the Heart of Appalachia written by John O'Brien and published by Alfred A. Knopf. This book was released on 2001 with total page 326 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: John O'Brien's deeply evocative book re- veals a place and a way of life--and the lives of an estranged father and son whose differences rest, ironically, in their own powerful bonds to Appalachia. John O'Brien was born in Philadelphia, his father having left his beloved home in the West Virginia mountains after an impoverished childhood made all the more painful by family tragedy. Struggling to escape a father defeated by disappointment, displacement, and poverty, John too left home. When John decided to settle near his father's birthplace in West Virginia, he hoped to comprehend the elder O'Brien's attachment to the land, as well as the disabling fatalism he had carried north. What he discovered is hardly the mythic Appalachia most Americans imagine, but a world of extravagant beauty--lush with green mountains, deep forests, ice-cold trout streams, and small hill farms. The people we meet who inhabit this land are for the most part unpretentious, working class, straightforward, open, commonsensical, and easygoing. They tend to look back more than most Americans do, defining themselves by how they fit into an extended family that includes their ancestors. We are in a mountain culture that feels old and deeply rooted, that follows a traditional way of life. It is a world the author would finally love and call his own. We also come face-to-face with provincialism, intolerance, and--perhaps Appalachia's defining legacy--the horrors of the coalfields and chemical plants. We see clearly what rapacious greed and exploitation have done for generations to much of the landscape and to the lives of the people. And we learn of the stream of reformers and missionaries, ever readyto show Appalachia the way, whose real contributions tend to be negligible or absurd. In this clear-eyed, beautifully rendered telling of his story and his father's, John O'Brien gives us, as well, the history and true heart of Appalachia.
Download or read book The Appalachians written by Mari-Lynn Evans and published by . This book was released on 2004 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In a time when the world has become a global village and America a global nation, there is one place where things are largely as they used to be. Protected by mountains, largely ignored by modern industry and developers, Appalachia is America’s first and last frontier. Encom-passing more than 195,000 square miles in thirteen states, it possesses the least understood and most underappreciated culture in the United States. A beautifully produced companion volume to the PBS documentary narrated by Naomi Judd, The Appalachians fills the void in information about the region, offering a rich portrait of its history and its legacy in music, literature, and film. The text includes essays by some of Appalachia’s most respected scholars and journalists; excerpts from never-before-published diaries and journals; firsthand recollections from native Appalachians including Loretta Lynn, Ricky Skaggs, and Ralph Stanley; indigenous song lyrics and poetry; and oral histories from common folk whose roots run strong and deep. The book also includes more than one hundred illustrations, both archival and newly created. Here is a wondrous book celebrating a unique and invaluable cultural heritage.
Download or read book Appalachia written by Frank S. Riddel and published by . This book was released on 1974 with total page 364 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Appalachia on Our Mind written by Henry D. Shapiro and published by UNC Press Books. This book was released on 2014-03-30 with total page 399 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Who Owns Appalachia written by Appalachian Land Ownership Task Force and published by University Press of Kentucky. This book was released on 2014-07-15 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Long viewed as a problem in other countries, the ownership of land and resources is becoming an issue of mounting concern in the United States. Nowhere has it surfaced more dramatically than in the southern Appalachians where the exploitation of timber and mineral resources has been recently aggravated by the ravages of strip-mining and flash floods. This landmark study of the mountain region documents for the first time the full scale and extent of the ownership and control of the region's land and resources and shows in a compelling, yet non-polemical fashion the relationship between this control and conditions affecting the lives of the region's people. Begun in 1978 and extending through 1980, this survey of land ownership is notable for the magnitude of its coverage. It embraces six states of the southern Appalachian region -- Virginia, West Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, North Carolina, and Alabama. From these states the research team selected 80 counties, and within those counties field workers documented the ownership of over 55,000 parcels of property, totaling over 20 million acres of land and mineral rights. The survey is equally significant for its systematic investigation of the relations between ownership and conditions within Appalachian communities. Researchers compiled data on 100 socioeconomic indicators and correlated these with the ownership of land and mineral rights. The findings of the survey form a generally dark picture of the region -- local governments struggling to provide needed services on tax revenues that are at once inadequate and inequitable; economic development and diversification stifled; increasing loss of farmland, a traditional source of subsistence in the region. Most evident perhaps is the adverse effect upon housing resulting from corporate ownership and land speculation. Nor is the trend toward greater conglomerate ownership of energy resources, the expansion of absentee ownership into new areas, and the search for new mineral and energy sources encouraging. Who Owns Appalachia? will be an enduring resource for all those interested in this region and its problems. It is, moreover, both a model and a document for social and economic concerns likely to be of critical importance for the entire nation.
Download or read book In Search of Appalachia written by Nancy Brown Diggs and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2019-12-10 with total page 211 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: After writing extensively about different cultures, Nancy Brown Diggs chose to focus on one closer to her own, the Appalachian, and was surprised to learn that it is her own—and quite different from the image conveyed by the media. Rich in anecdotes and interviews that bring her research to life, this book offers a study of Appalachians today and explores what they are truly like, and why, concluding that is a culture to be celebrated, not denigrated.
Download or read book Backroads Faces of Appalachia written by Lynn Coffey and published by Lynn Coffey. This book was released on 2016-02-03 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Backroads 3: Faces of Appalachia is the third in a five-book series by Lynn Coffey about the native people of Virginia's highlands and their customs. As with the first two Backroads books, Faces of Appalachia is chock full of old time subject matter such as making apple cider, scrub board washing, cutting winter firewood, gathering watercress, outdoor privies, tapping maple trees for syrup and the demise of the American Chestnut trees, which the mountain people said was "the worst lick the south ever had." Lynn writes the life stories of twenty-four of her close friends living in and around the mountain village of Love where she makes her home, giving new insight into the lives of those inappropriately dubbed "hillbillies" by the media. People like Lizzie Wyant Wood, the plucky little woman who raised nine children and at this writing is almost 111 years of age and still living in her own home, doing her laundry, cooking meals, planting garden and canning the harvest as well as beating anyone who sis down in the evenings to play a hand of Pollyanna. Take a ride with Junior Hatter, a rural mountain mail carrier who still delivers groceries to the older widows on his route or opens a mailbox with a Mason jar of sugar in it with a note, "Take this down to Annie Carr who is baking a cake and needs it." Or marvel at the love between Irvin and Melba Rosen who celebrated their sixty-seventh wedding anniversary and are still busy, active people, full of good humor and a zest for life than many envy. These and many more will entertain readers and give new respect for the rugged folks that call the Blue Ridge Mountains home.
Download or read book Remembering the 40 S written by TRUMAN FIELDS and published by Author House. This book was released on 2009-09-12 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ive often heard it said that everybody has a story to tell, and I know this is true, but I have found also that we all have a yearning to tell our story. Also, we have numerous ways to do it: through voice, writing instruments and machines, through photographic and digital images that we make or assemble, and also through the pattern of our living, and in the things that we create. Truman Fields is a many-faceted person, and he has left plenty of evidence of his interesting story to supplement what he tells us in this book. He has been a persistent student, teacher and craftsman, a successful businessman, and an award-winning tennis player, a superb craftsman, and a public servant. He was born in the center of the Appalachian coal fields, where he attended local schools until his father, perceived that Truman had a desire to learn more than might be possible locally, sent his reluctant son to Berea Foundation High School at the age of sixteen. There, in addition to the usual academic subjects, he began probing the complexities of electronics, metal-and-wood, and of course basketball and tennis. Without money, he was a half-day student, meaning he took classes for half the day and worked in the rest of the day for his room and board. Thus it would have taken him five years to complete high school, so ever restless and inquisitive, he decided at the age of twenty, to join the Navy for four years. The Navy sent him to electronic school before assigning him to a destroyer tender. On this ship, he saw a great deal of the world. At age 24, he re-entered the Foundation School for a semester to finish high school, and then enrolled at Berea College. There he majored in Industrial Arts and played tennis so well that he was a finalist in several tournaments. In college, he met Joyce Barnes from Tennessee, and they were married. After graduation Truman taught in Louisville and then moved to Cleveland, Ohio, where he and Joyce taught for 30 years. There, Truman also worked successfully part-time as a real estate broker and he coached tennis at Baldwin Wallace College. Joyce and Truman reared two daughters in Cleveland, and their grandchildren, who know little of life in the Appalachian Mountains, became the main inspiration for this book. When Joyce and Truman retired from teaching, their love of Berea College and the Berea community drew them back to Kentucky. Here they have managed several rental properties and developed home-building sights. Truman was elected for several terms to Berea City Council, taught students, faculty, and community people to make furniture in the Colleges woodworking shop, and coached the college tennis team. He also continued to follow the tennis circuits, winning many gold metals in his age class. Joyce has also been much involved in the arts and crafts scene for which Berea is famous. She and Truman are active members of Union Church, the mother church of Berea College. They are also generous supporters of Berea College in the knowledge that the lives of other young people from the mountains will be enriched there, as theirs have been. In this book, Joyce and Trumans grandchildren, and others, will learn much about the life Truman lived as a boy, about the one-room school he attended, his classmates, the games they played, the spelling bees, the sporting contests, the victories and disappointments in his budding life, his teachers and pastors vigorous efforts to teach right from wrong, and his own family history. Along the way, from Big Creek to Berea, to Louisville, and Cleveland and back to Berea, we learn Trumans story and the events that shaped him from the lad on the cover in Happy Jack overalls looking with sharp and expectant eyes, to the disciplined tireless, teacher, public servant, athlete, auctioneer, craftsman, and student of all Kentucky things today. Hes been a little modest, however, like most mountain people, in telling his story. So keep in mind all that he has done, all his interests and involvements, as he remembers and tells you about his life in the heart of Appalachia. Loyal Jones Berea, Kentucky
Download or read book My Appalachia written by Sidney Saylor Farr and published by University Press of Kentucky. This book was released on 2014-04-23 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This remarkable memoir is “both one person’s extraordinary life story and a first-hand look at life in the mountains in a time that is fading from memory” (Kentucky Monthly). 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, and at twelve, she was forced to leave school to care for her ailing mother and younger siblings. Though she didn’t have much 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 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. Eventually, 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 literature. Living in Appalachia was difficult—many people of Farr’s generation left the mountains for good—but she persisted through countless challenges, including poverty, discrimination, and personal loss, and managed to thrive. Composed of a rich mix of folklore, family history, and spiritual and intellectual exploration, Farr’s memoir shares the stories of her struggles and triumphs to create a vivid picture of a culture as enduring as the mountains. Winner of the Appalachian Book of the Year Award
Download or read book Dear Appalachia written by Emily Satterwhite and published by University Press of Kentucky. This book was released on 2011-10-01 with total page 397 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Much criticism has been directed at negative stereotypes of Appalachia perpetuated by movies, television shows, and news media. Books, on the other hand, often draw enthusiastic praise for their celebration of the simplicity and authenticity of the Appalachian region. Dear Appalachia: Readers, Identity, and Popular Fiction since 1878 employs the innovative new strategy of examining fan mail, reviews, and readers’ geographic affiliations to understand how readers have imagined the region and what purposes these imagined geographies have served for them. As Emily Satterwhite traces the changing visions of Appalachia across the decades, from the Gilded Age (1865–1895) to the present, she finds that every generation has produced an audience hungry for a romantic version of Appalachia. According to Satterwhite, best-selling fiction has portrayed Appalachia as a distinctive place apart from the mainstream United States, has offered cosmopolitan white readers a sense of identity and community, and has engendered feelings of national and cultural pride. Thanks in part to readers’ faith in authors as authentic representatives of the regions they write about, Satterwhite argues, regional fiction often plays a role in creating and affirming regional identity. By mapping the geographic locations of fans, Dear Appalachia demonstrates that mobile white readers in particular, including regional elites, have idealized Appalachia as rooted, static, and protected from commercial society in order to reassure themselves that there remains an “authentic” America untouched by global currents. Investigating texts such as John Fox Jr.’s The Trail of the Lonesome Pine (1908), Harriette Arnow’s The Dollmaker (1954), James Dickey’s Deliverance (1970), and Charles Frazier’s Cold Mountain (1997), Dear Appalachia moves beyond traditional studies of regional fiction to document the functions of these narratives in the lives of readers, revealing not only what people have thought about Appalachia, but why.
Download or read book Appalachia written by and published by . This book was released on 1999 with total page 590 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book An Appalachian Mother s Love written by Tony Smith and published by AuthorHouse. This book was released on 2010-10-18 with total page 222 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: I will get him a squirrel gun A few days went by and one morning I got up out of bed before Mom and Dad did. I walked into the living room and quietly sat down. I could hear Mom and Dad talking in their bedroom. I heard Mom say to Dad, You could buy Tony a good shot gun if you would do it. I heard Dad say back to Mom, Now I just dont have the money. Mom told him, Its a sin to lie. Dad said to her, Well, you go buy him a gun if you can. Then Mom told him. I will get him a squirrel gun if it harelips old Billy Hell, you just wait and see if I dont.
Download or read book Uneven Ground written by Ronald D Eller and published by University Press of Kentucky. This book was released on 2008-10-24 with total page 393 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Appalachia has played a complex and often contradictory role in the unfolding of American history. Created by urban journalists in the years following the Civil War, the idea of Appalachia provided a counterpoint to emerging definitions of progress. Early-twentieth-century critics of modernity saw the region as a remnant of frontier life, a reflection of simpler times that should be preserved and protected. However, supporters of development and of the growth of material production, consumption, and technology decried what they perceived as the isolation and backwardness of the place and sought to "uplift" the mountain people through education and industrialization. Ronald D Eller has worked with local leaders, state policymakers, and national planners to translate the lessons of private industrial-development history into public policy affecting the region. In Uneven Ground: Appalachia since 1945, Eller examines the politics of development in Appalachia since World War II with an eye toward exploring the idea of progress as it has evolved in modern America. Appalachia's struggle to overcome poverty, to live in harmony with the land, and to respect the diversity of cultures and the value of community is also an American story. In the end, Eller concludes, "Appalachia was not different from the rest of America; it was in fact a mirror of what the nation was becoming."
Download or read book Appalachia in the Sixties written by David S. Walls and published by University Press of Kentucky. This book was released on 2021-03-17 with total page 345 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In The Southern Appalachian Region: A Survey, published by the University Press of Kentucky in 1962, Rupert Vance suggested a decennial review of the region's progress. No systematic study comparable to that made at the beginning of the decade is available to answer the question of how far Appalachia has come since then, but David S. Walls and John B. Stephenson have assembled a broad range of firsthand reports which together convey the story of Appalachia in the sixties. These observations of journalists, field workers, local residents, and social scientists have been gathered from a variety of sources ranging from national magazines to county weeklies. Focusing mainly on the coalfields of West Virginia, eastern Kentucky, southwestern Virginia, and north-central Tennessee, the editors first present selections that reflect the "rediscovery" of the region as a problem area in the early sixties and describe the federal programs designed to rehabilitate it and their results. Other sections focus on the politics of the coal industry, the extent and impact of the continued migration from the region, and the persistence of human suffering and environmental devastation. A final section moves into the 1970s with proposals for the future. Although they conclude that there is little ground for claiming success in solving the region's problems, the editors find signs of hope in the scattered movements toward grass-roots organization described by some of the contributors, and in the new tendency to define solutions in terms of reconstruction rather than amelioration.
Download or read book Appalachians All written by Mark T. Banker and published by Univ. of Tennessee Press. This book was released on 2011-02-01 with total page 350 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A singular achievement. Mark Banker reveals an almost paradoxical Appalachia that trumps all the stereotypes. Interweaving his family history with the region’s latest scholarship, Banker uncovers deep psychological and economic interconnections between East Tennessee’s ‘three Appalachias’—its tourist-laden Smokies, its urbanized Valley, and its strip-mined Plateau.” —Paul Salstrom, author of Appalachia’s Path to Dependency "Banker weaves a story of Appalachia that is at once a national and regional history, a family saga, and a personal odyssey. This book reads like a conversation with a good friend who is well-read and well-informed, thoughtful, wise, and passionate about his subject. He brings new insights to those who know the region well, but, more importantly, he will introduce the region's complexities to a wider audience." —Jean Haskell, coeditor, Encyclopedia of Appalachia Appalachians All intertwines the histories of three communities—Knoxville with its urban life, Cades Cove with its farming, logging, and tourism legacies, and the Clearfork Valley with its coal production—to tell a larger story of East Tennessee and its inhabitants. Combining a perceptive account of how industrialization shaped developments in these communities since the Civil War with a heartfelt reflection on Appalachian identity, Mark Banker provides a significant new regional history with implications that extend well beyond East Tennessee’s boundaries. Writing with the keen eye of a native son who left the area only to return years later, Banker uses elements of his own autobiography to underscore the ways in which East Tennesseans, particularly “successful” urban dwellers, often distance themselves from an Appalachian identity. This understandable albeit regrettable response, Banker suggests, diminishes and demeans both the individual and region, making stereotypically “Appalachian” conditions self-perpetuating. Whether exploring grassroots activism in the Clearfork Valley, the agrarian traditions and subsequent displacement of Cades Cove residents, or Knoxvillians’ efforts to promote trade, tourism, and industry, Banker’s detailed historical excursions reveal not only a profound richness and complexity in the East Tennessee experience but also a profound interconnectedness. Synthesizing the extensive research and revisionist interpretations of Appalachia that have emerged over the last thirty years, Banker offers a new lens for constructively viewing East Tennessee and its past. He challenges readers to reconsider ideas that have long diminished the region and to re-imagine Appalachia. And ultimately, while Appalachians All speaks most directly to East Tennesseans and other Appalachian residents, it also carries important lessons for any reader seeking to understand the crucial connections between history, self, and place. Mark T. Banker, a history teacher at Webb School of Knoxville, resides on the farm where he was raised in nearby Roane County. He earned his PhD at the University of New Mexico and is the author of Presbyterian Missions and Cultural Interaction in the Far Southwest, 1850–1950. His articles have appeared in the Journal of Presbyterian History, Journal of the West, OAH Magazine of History, and Appalachian Journal.
Download or read book Something s Rising written by Silas House and published by University Press of Kentucky. This book was released on 2009-04-17 with total page 406 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Two Appalachian authors record personal stories of local resistance against the coal industry in this “revelatory work . . . oral history at its best” (Studs Terkel). Developed as an alternative to strip mining, mountaintop removal mining consists of blasting away the tops of mountains, dumping waste into the valleys, and retrieving the exposed coal. This process buries streams, pollutes wells and waterways, and alters fragile ecologies—all of which has a devastating impact on local communities. Something's Rising gives a stirring voice to the lives, culture, and determination of the people fighting this destructive practice in the coalfields of central Appalachia. The people who live, work, and raise families here face not only the destruction of their land but also the loss of their culture and health. Each person's story, unique and unfiltered, is prefaced with a biographical essay that vividly establishes the interview settings and the subjects' connections to their region. Included here are oral histories from Jean Ritchie, "the mother of folk," who doesn't let her eighty-six years slow down her fighting spirit; Judy Bonds, a tough-talking coal-miner's daughter; Kathy Mattea, the beloved country singer who believes cooperation is the key to winning the battle; Jack Spadaro, the heroic whistle-blower who has risked everything to share his insider knowledge of federal mining agencies; Larry Bush, who doesn't back down even when speeding coal trucks are used to intimidate him; Denise Giardina, a celebrated writer who ran for governor to bring attention to the issue; and many more.
Download or read book My Curious and Jocular Heroes written by Loyal Jones and published by University of Illinois Press. This book was released on 2017-08-25 with total page 327 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We were going down the road, and we came to this house. There was a little boy standing by the road just crying and crying. We stopped, and we heard the biggest racket you ever heard up in the house. “What’s the matter, son?” “Why, Maw and Paw are up there fightin’.” “Who is your Paw, son?” “Well, that’s what they are fightin’ over.” Brimming with ballads, stories, riddles, tall tales, and great good humor, My Curious and Jocular Heroes pays homage to four people who guided and inspired Loyal Jones’s own study of Appalachian culture. His sharp-eyed portraits introduce a new generation to Bascom Lunsford, the pioneer behind the “memory collections” of song and story at Columbia University and the Library of Congress; the Sorbonne-educated collector and performer Josiah H. Combs; Cratis D. Williams, the legendary father of Appalachian studies; and the folklorist and master storyteller Leonard W. Roberts. Throughout, Jones highlights the tales, songs, jokes, and other collected nuggets that define the breadth of each man’s research and repertoire.
