Seeking Home

Marginalization and Representation in Appalachian Literature and Song

Leslie Harper Worthington, Jürgen Grandt

• Publisher: University of Tennessee Press
• Year: 2024
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9781621902607
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: North American Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

Appalachian people are frequently depicted as poorly educated whites who isolate themselves in mountain hollows. In Seeking Home, editors Leslie Harper Worthington and Jürgen E. Grandt turn that stereotype upside down by showcasing Appalachia’s ethnic diversity through a lively collection of essays discussing fiction, poetry, letters, and songs.

This distinct collection begins with a personal narrative in which Worthington relates how she discovered her own home through teaching Lee Smith’s Fair and Tender Ladies. Other essays range from the anticipated—Ron Rash, Barbara Kingsolver, Harriette Simpson Arnow—to the unanticipated—Charles Frazier’s magical realism, a Confederate soldier’s journals, and three different examinations of Affrilachian poets. Adding further texture to the collection are essays examining the diversity in Appalachian music, including Cherokee song and dance, a discussion of Appalachian mining songs, and an examination of recording technology and authenticity.

Seeking Home confirms that just as there are many Souths, there are also many Appalachias. The region is multifaceted, multicultural, and all we have to do is be willing to examine the variety.

LESLIE HARPER WORTHINGTON is the dean of Academic Programs and Services at Gadsden State Community College in Alabama. She is the author of Cormac McCarthy and the Ghost of Huck Finn. JÜRGEN E. GRANDT is an associate professor of English at the University of North Georgia. He is the author of Shaping Words to Fit the Soul: The Southern Ritual Grounds of Afro-Modernism and Kinds of Blue: The Jazz Aesthetic in African American Narrative.

Table of contents

• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction. Finding Homes in Lee Smith’s Fair and Tender Ladies, Leslie Harper Worthington
• Chapter 1. What Mountains Move: Magical Realism in Appalachian Literature, Monica C. Miller
• Chapter 2. Army Life, Old Times, and Dreams: Images of Home in the Civil War Journals of Alexander Sterrett Paxton, Kimberly M. Jew
• Chapter 3. Performance, Frame, and Identity in Harriette Simpson Arnow’s “The Goat Who Was a Cow”, Cassie Patterson
• Chapter 4. Cross-Pollinating Appalachian Communities: Insider/Outsider Knowledge in Barbara Kingsolver’s Prodigal Summer, Rhonda Jenkins Armstrong
• Chapter 5. Beyond Black and White: Ethnic Complexity within the Affrilachian Poets, Sharon E. Colley
• Chapter 6. Consenting to Create: Crystal Wilkinson and the Affrilachian Movement, Erica Abrams Locklear
• Chapter 7. Affrilachian Interiority: Frank X Walker and the Weight of Appalachia, Michelle S. Hite
• Chapter 8. Appalachian Literature and Race Relations in the Newer South: Homogeneity and History in Ron Rash’s Burning Bright and Natasha Trethewey’s Native Guard, Artress Bethany White
• Chapter 9. Feed the Kids, Feed the Hungry Beast: Crystal Methamphetamine Addiction and the Exploitation of Family Structures in the Short Stories of Ron Rash, Daniel Davis Wood
• Chapter 10. “Come Holy Spirit, Lord God”: The Holy Ghost in the, James A. Owen
• Chapter 11. “As Long as My Luck and Lungs Hold Out”: The Processes of Power in Appalachian Mining Songs, Roxanne Harde
• Chapter 12. “A song don’t just spring outer nowhere”: Recording Technology and the Invention of Authenticity in Lee Smith’s The Devil’s Dream, Jürgen E. Grandt
• Contributors
• Index