Alvin Goins was a day laborer living in Rhea County, Tennessee, during the early and mid-years of the twentieth century. He was a Melungeon, a descendant of Portuguese ancestry. He was also illiterate. Yet, he had an extraordinary gift for numbers, able to calculate sums mentally in seconds, qualifying him,Continue Reading
When I was ten, my mother enrolled me in Margaret Howell’s School of Dancing and Etiquette. It was a phase of my male finishing school education designed to rid the savage within and transform me into a Southern gentleman, i.e., Chaucer’s “veray parfit gentil knight.” (For the record, all gentlemenContinue Reading
— From Death, Child, & Love: Poems 1980-2000 Last night while trimming our Christmas tree my son pointed out how I’d not written many poems lately to which I replied, “It’s true. But sometimes life is more prose than poetry. Do you understand?” A stupid question considering what he’d justContinue Reading
Henry Everett The old man lived for the sound of a chicken squawking, the sentry’s warning at which he drew back light from a windowless cabin, a portal cut squarely at eye-level in a single oaken door, then stuck the sightless barrel directionlessly out into night that thundered once withContinue Reading
**Photo Source: Library of Congress The history of the Southern Appalachian region is a saga of exploitation by profiteers inimical to the aims of ordinary people to provide for their families in safe conditions. The brutal treatment of coal miners and their families is well known and thoroughly documented. However,Continue Reading
If you read my review of J.D. Vance’s Hillbilly Elegy, then you’ll recognize that Elizabeth Catte’s What You Are Getting Wrong About Appalachia has done my work for me, though we arrived at similar conclusions independently. Catte is a historian with more than simply an anecdotal interest in Appalachia. WhereasContinue Reading
“Shut up, you fucker. You smart-ass. If I wasn’t crippled, I’d get up right now and smack your head and ass together.” – Mamaw from J.D. Vance’s Hillbilly Elegy My suspicion is that J.D. Vance tries to shock his readers by pretending he’s unfazed by his family’s white trashContinue Reading
**Photograph: A crowd of miners confronting soldiers – Harlan County, Kentucky 1939 My stage play, “Which Side Are You On: The Florence Reece Story,” debuted at Pellissippi State Community College on April 15, 2016. The play recounts episodes in the life of Florence Reece, an American social activist, poet,Continue Reading
I know Daddy knows what he’s doing. Even when he’s quiet he’s thinking. The old man with tobacco sitting in his jaw like a tumor is our enemy. He would keep us from buying the truck we need that slopes on the weedy ridge of this junkyard. Because I amContinue Reading
Without a nod you give yourself to us Where hedges grew and trolleys screeched on track and you once played without a trace of fuss the swollen games of children back to back. A hump-backed sidewalk stretches at the seams. Here once James Agee woke from awkward sleep to findContinue Reading