My Appalachia
My Appalachia

Author: Sidney Saylor Farr

Publisher: University Press of Kentucky

Published: 2014-04-23

Total Pages: 272

ISBN-13: 0813145678

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Although Sidney Saylor Farr is renowned in the field of Appalachian studies, her own fascinating personal history has been little known until now. My Appalachia is Farr's story of growing up in the mountains of southeastern Kentucky, where her devotion to her family led her to accept crushing responsibilities that steered her away from her own goals. Her intense determination, however, compelled her to find her own path in life and gave her the strength to become one of the most influential figures in her discipline. At the age of twelve, Farr was forced to leave school to care for her ailing mother and several younger siblings. Given the responsibilities of adulthood early in life, she pushed herself through countless challenges, including poverty, discrimination, and personal loss. Yet she managed to thrive -- she educated herself, raised two sons, and became 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, My Appalachia reveals the beauty at the heart of life in Appalachia.

My Appalachia 1924-1942
My Appalachia 1924-1942

Author: Lorraine Stott Maiden

Publisher: Author House

Published: 2013-07-03

Total Pages: 97

ISBN-13: 1481773836

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Lorraine Stott Maiden celebrates family bonds, hard work, and growing up in Appalachia from 1924 to 1942 in this autobiography that will have you yearning for yesterday. Throughout her childhood, Maiden’s family moved around Kentucky’s mining country to make ends meet. Even though life was tough, she remembers with fondness getting up in the morning to have breakfast with her daddy, who would tickle her and toss her in the air before leaving for work. The Great Depression would take a toll on the family, but this was during a time when someone’s struggle to succeed was their determining factor for failure or success. The government did not rescue the disadvantaged—at least not until Franklin D. Roosevelt and his New Deal came along. There were no evil intentions—only people struggling to find their own niche. Some succeeded, and some gave up. That was just part of growing up and trying to survive in Appalachia.

Another Appalachia
Another Appalachia

Author: Neema Avashia

Publisher:

Published: 2022

Total Pages: 168

ISBN-13: 9781952271427

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"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"--

My Appalachia
My Appalachia

Author: Rebecca Caudill

Publisher:

Published: 1966

Total Pages: 104

ISBN-13:

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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.

My Appalachia
My Appalachia

Author: Sidney Saylor Farr

Publisher: University Press of Kentucky

Published: 2014-04-23

Total Pages: 304

ISBN-13: 0813145686

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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

Hillbilly Elegy
Hillbilly Elegy

Author: J. D. Vance

Publisher: HarperCollins

Published: 2018-05-01

Total Pages: 270

ISBN-13: 0062872257

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THE #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER IS NOW A MAJOR-MOTION PICTURE DIRECTED BY RON HOWARD AND STARRING AMY ADAMS, GLENN CLOSE, AND GABRIEL BASSO "You will not read a more important book about America this year."—The Economist "A riveting book."—The Wall Street Journal "Essential reading."—David Brooks, New York Times Hillbilly Elegy is a passionate and personal analysis of a culture in crisis—that of white working-class Americans. The disintegration of this group, a process that has been slowly occurring now for more than forty years, has been reported with growing frequency and alarm, but has never before been written about as searingly from the inside. J. D. Vance tells the true story of what a social, regional, and class decline feels like when you were born with it hung around your neck. The Vance family story begins hopefully in postwar America. J. D.’s grandparents were “dirt poor and in love,” and moved north from Kentucky’s Appalachia region to Ohio in the hopes of escaping the dreadful poverty around them. They raised a middle-class family, and eventually one of their grandchildren would graduate from Yale Law School, a conventional marker of success in achieving generational upward mobility. But as the family saga of Hillbilly Elegy plays out, we learn that J.D.'s grandparents, aunt, uncle, sister, and, most of all, his mother struggled profoundly with the demands of their new middle-class life, never fully escaping the legacy of abuse, alcoholism, poverty, and trauma so characteristic of their part of America. With piercing honesty, Vance shows how he himself still carries around the demons of his chaotic family history. A deeply moving memoir, with its share of humor and vividly colorful figures, Hillbilly Elegy is the story of how upward mobility really feels. And it is an urgent and troubling meditation on the loss of the American dream for a large segment of this country.

Dorie
Dorie

Author: Florence Cope Bush

Publisher:

Published: 1992

Total Pages: 242

ISBN-13: 9780870497261

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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.

Appalachian Reckoning
Appalachian Reckoning

Author: Anthony Harkins

Publisher:

Published: 2019

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781946684790

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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

Hill Women
Hill Women

Author: Cassie Chambers

Publisher: Ballantine Books

Published: 2021-01-12

Total Pages: 305

ISBN-13: 1984818937

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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.