“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
The next part of our journey transports us on a cold December day to Briceville, Tennessee – just a hop, skip, and a jump away from Coal Creek. We arrive at the Cross Mountain mine almost ten years after the Fraterville mine disaster. Coal camps in Appalachia were cheerful inContinue Reading
After the Coal Creek War, coalminers garnered a new respect, reclaimed their jobs and formed unions. Coal companies gained a skilled workforce and restructured the industry better than it was before convict-leasing. Families were relatively happy as normalcy and stability returned. Ten years after the Coal Creek War’s end, however,Continue 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
When I was about five years old (before we moved to the holler), my family and I lived in a little green house on a little paved street in Jacksboro, Tennessee. My younger brother and I often felt cramped in our small, grassy yard, so we regularly wandered—but rarely tooContinue Reading
On closer look it becomes what we most despise: something unnameably near, confounding us with its ability to make vague silhouettes of familiar landmarks or bloat the once-solid shapes of signs lending geometric certitude to all our directions. — Edward Francisco From “The Terror of Kudzu” One of myContinue Reading
Ma: You fixed thishere ringer warsher yet? Pa: I’ll git to it terreckly. Ma: When? Pa: I might could fix it tamaree fit don’t rain. Ma: You might ought to’ve fixed it yestidy when there warn’t no threat of rain. ‘Sides, rain ain’t got nuthin’ to do with it.Continue Reading
He was a pariah among his own people, having been born with a club foot. His formal education ended early because boys at school taunted him. Maybe that was fate’s way of ensuring the child, who later became Sequoyah, aka Edward Guess, inventor of the Cherokee syllabary, discovered in hisContinue Reading
Inside and outside Appalachian homes, you might find any number of up-cycled, homemade gadgets pieced together in ways that Dr. Frankenstein would envy. You might notice saw-marked furniture restored as closely as possible to original designs. Folk art, tasteful or not, could be a painted sign, string art, or evenContinue Reading