Bloodroot: Reflections on Place by Appalachian Women Writers

314 Pages·1998·20.62 MB·English

by  Joyce Dyer

Bloodroot
Winner of the 1997
Appalachian Studies Award

Bloodroot
Reflections on Place
by Appalachian
UI'Omen Writers
JOYCE DYER, EDITOR
THE UNIVERSITY PREss OlF KENTUCKY
Publication of this volume was made possible in part by grants from the
E.O. Robinson Mountain Fund and the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Copyright © 1998 by The University Press of Kentucky
Scholarly publisher for the Commonwealth,
serving Bellarmine College, Berea College, Centre
College of Kentucky, Eastern Kentucky University,
The Filson Club Historical Society, Georgetown College,
Kentucky Historical Society, Kentucky State University,
Morehead State University, Murray State University,
Northern Kentucky University, Transylvania University,
University of Kentucky, University of Louisville,
and Western Kentucky University.
All rights reserved
Editorial and Sales Offices: The University Press of Kentucky
663 South Limestone Street, Lexington, Kentucky 40508-4008
02 01 00 99 98 5 4 3 2
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Bloodroot: reflections on place by Appalachian women writers / Joyce
Dyer, editor.
p. cm.
"Winner of the 1997 Appalachian studies award" -Half t.p.
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 0-8131-2059-4 Calk. paper)
ISBN 0-8131-0983-3 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. American literature-Appalachian Region, Southern-History and
criticism-Theory, etc. 2. Women and literature-Appalachian
Region, Southern-History-20th century. 3. American literature
Women authors-History and criticism-Theory, etc. 4. American
literature-Southern States-History and criticism-Theory, etc.
5. Women authors, American-Appalachian Region, Southern-Biography.
6. American literature-20th century-History and criticism.
7. Women-Appalachian Region, Southern-Intellectual life.
8. Appalachian Region, Southern-In literature. 9. Women-Southern
States-Intellectual life. 10. Southern States-In literature.
11. Regionalism in literature. I. Dyer, Joyce.
PS286.A6B57 1998
810.9'9287'0975-dc21 97-45570
This book is printed on acid-free recycled paper meeting
the requirements of the American National Standard
for Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials.
§®
Manufactured in the United States of America
Contents
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS VB
INTRODUCTION 1
SHEILA KAY ADAMS Flowering Ivy 16
LISA ALTHER Border States 21
MAGGIE ANDERSON The Mountains Dark and Close
around Me 31
MARILOU AWIAKTA Sound 40
ARTIE ANN BATES Root Hog, or Die 52
KATHRYN STRIPLING BYER Deep Water 61
Jo CARSON Good Questions 71
Lou Y.P. CRABTREE Paradise in Price Hollow 80
DORIS DIOSA DAVENPORT All This, and Honeysuckles Too 87
HILDA DOWNER Mutant in Bandana 98
WILMA DYKEMAN "The Past Is Never Dead. It's Not
Even Past" 105
SIDNEY SAYLOR FARR Women Born to Be Strong III
NIKKY FINNEY Salt-Water Geechee Mounds 120
DENISE GIARDINA No Scapin the Booger Man 128
NIKKI GIOVANNI 400 Mulvaney Street 132
GAIL GODWIN Uncle Orphy 140
ELLESA CLAY HIGH The Standing People 146
LISA KOGER Writing in the Smokehouse 153
GEORGE ELLA LYON Voiceplace 167
SHARYN MCCRUMB Keepers of the Legends 175
LLEWELLYN McKERNAN Letter from a Poet in West Virginia 187
HEATHER Ross MILLER A Natural History 192
ELAINE FOWLER PALENCIA Leaving Pre-Appalachia 200
JAYNE ANNE PHILLIPS Premature Burial 209
RITA SIMS QUILLEN Counting the Sums 218
JEAN RITCHIE The Song about the Story-The Story
behind the Song 225
BETTIE SELLERS Westward from Bald Mountain 233
MARY LEE SETTLE The Search for the Beulah Quintet 243
ANNE SHELBY Piddlin' 247
BETSY SHOLL Big Stone Gap 253
BENNIE LEE SINCLAIR Appalachian Loaves and Fishes 261
BARBARA SMITH Inside Discoveries 272
LEE SMITH Terrain of the Heart 277
JANE STUART This House and This World 282
MEREDITH SUE WILLIS An Inquiry into Who My Grandmother
Really Was 289
WORKS CITED 298
Acknowledgments
It is hard to say where an interest, or a book, begins. If we could determine that,
we would know who to thank and run no risk of leaving someone out. I'm afraid,
however, that this book has no clear beginning. As I think back, in some form it
has always been there, just waiting. So I must start by thanking all the hundreds of
people who have, over the years, fed my interest in Appalachia and Appalachian
studies and kept it strong. It would be impossible to name them all, so I ask that
the thanks I give below to the few individuals I am able to include might come to
represent my common thanks.
Jerry Williamson, editor ofA ppalachian Journal has certainly been one of my
strongest advocates and best critics. He cares about the region deeply, about both
its writers and its issues. I cannot imagine doing Appalachian scholarship without
having every issue ofA J on my shelf to the right of my desk. For twenty-five years
this publication has driven and directed Appalachian studies and research. For
Jerry, the Journal has been a labor of love since its inception in the 1970s-but
labor, nonetheless. It was Jerry Williamson who always knew what I was working
on, who always cared to ask. He even knew what books I was reading-and in
vited me to review them. It was Jerry Williamson who recommended to Green
wood Press that I write the bio-bibliographical essay on Jim Wayne Miller for
their volume Contemporary Poets, Dramatists, Essayists, and Novelists o/the South.
I had already begun to talk about Miller's work in Jerry's publication, but
only after I wrote the piece for Greenwood did I come to fully understand that
this man, Jim Wayne Miller, would remain for the rest of his days not only one of
my favorite poets but also a mentor, a great resource (a deep well of knowledge) , a
loyal correspondent, and a friend. Although I met Jim only once, in Boone, North
Carolina, he always treated me like a neighbor. His long, elaborate, single-spaced
letters to me about this project on Appalachian women writers, and other projects
that preceded it, fill several notebooks. At the time, the letters were invaluable
resources. Now, just a short while after his untimely death due to lung cancer in
August 1996, they are treasures. Often written on yellow Xerox paper, they are
gold nuggets to me.
Sandra Ballard of Carson-Newman College in Jefferson City, Tennessee, de
serves more thanks than I can possibly provide, even if there were unlimited space
to try. Her enthusiasm and advocacy, as well as her excellent criticism, have left a
permanent impression on the pages that follow.
Vlll ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
There are many other individuals who helped me in small but important
ways, helped me with details I could never have pinned down without their guidance
and expertise. These people include Frank X. Walker at the Martin Luther King
Cultural Center at the University of Kentucky, Mike Mullins at Hindman Settle
ment School, Sidney Saylor Farr at Appalachian Heritage, Gurney Norman at the
University of Kentucky, John Lang at Emory & Henry College, Parks Lanier and
Jo Ann Asbury at Radford College, Jonathan Greene at Gnomon Press, Jane Woodside
of Now and Then, Jennifer Musgrove of the Asheville Citizen-Times, Liz McGeachy
ofA ppalshop, Rebecca Blakeney at the University ofS outh Carolina Press, Mary Gannon
of Poets 6-Writers, filmmaker Andrew Garrison, and contributor Bennie Lee Sinclair
(for helping with our volume's title). Writer Maggie Anderson deserves a line of
her own, for without her early bold advice on the direction of this book it would
have been something else entirely.
Also I am grateful to the following writers and publishers for permission to
reprint some of the essays and other materials included in this volume: Nikki
Giovanni's "400 Mulvaney Street," © 1971 by Nikki Giovanni, originally ap
peared in Gemini and is reprinted by permission of the author. Lisa Koger's "Writ
ing in the Smokehouse," © 1991 by Lisa Koger, originally appeared in The Confi
dence Woman: 26 Women Writers at Work, edited by Eve Shelnutt, and is reprinted
by permission of the author. George Ella Lyon's "Voiceplace" appeared in slightly
different form in the Ohio Journal of the English Language Arts 34, no. 2 (fall
1993) and is reprinted by permission ofOCTELA and the author. Jayne Anne
Phillips's "Premature Burial," © 1991 by Jayne Anne Phillips, first appeared in
The Movie That Changed My Life, edited by David Rosenberg, and is reprinted by
permission of the author. "The Search for the Beulah Quintet," © 1996 by Mary
Lee Settle, originally appeared in slightly different form as the introduction to 0
Beulah Land (Columbia: Univ. of South Carolina Press, 1996) and is reprinted by
permission of the author. An earlier version of Lee Smith's "Terrain of the Heart,"
© 1993 by Lee Smith, appeared in the News 6-0bserverofRaleigh, North Caro
lina, October 10, 1993; it is reprinted by permission of the author.
"Darling of My Heart" by Linda Prince Mathis is quoted by permission of the
author. "Waiting for a Train" by Jimmie Rodgers, © 1929 by Peer International
Corp. (copyright renewed, international copyright secured), is used by permission.
"A Testimony to Good Living" by Bob Terrell, © 1996 by the Asheville Citizen
Times, first appeared in that paper October 21, 1977 and is reprinted with per
mission. "Catch a Falling Star," © 1957 (renewed) by Music Sales Corporation
(ASCAP) and Emily Music Corp., all rights reserved, is used by permission.
I thank the National Endowment for the Humanities for two summer grants
that allowed me to work with key collections, and with some of the finest human
Acknowledgments lX
beings I have ever met, and the Ohio Arts Council for a 1997 Independent Artist
Fellowship that supported the completion of this volume.
I thank Hiram College for awarding me Gerstacker-Gund Fellowships that
were of great assistance. And I thank Michael Dively for his support of this project,
and for his support of the writers in this volume, through the awarding of gener
ous funds from the Michael Dively Endowment for Scholarly Publications. I also
would like to thank Deans Vivian Makosky and Michael Grajek for their constant
and unfailing encouragement.
The library staff of Hudson Library and Historical Society has vigorously
supported my work for twenty years. And I could not have made the progress I
was able to without the excellent advice and resourcefulness of Lisa Johnson (an
absolute wizard), Mary Lou Selander, Pat Basu, Jeff Wanser, Rosanne Factor, and
other library staff at Hiram College, as well as computer specialists Chris Haaker
and Barb DeYoung. Millie Schwan, faculty administrative assistant at Hiram Col
lege, offered invaluable help with the details of this book.
Of course, it is impossible to express adequate thanks to the University Press
of Kentucky for supporting the idea of this volume even before a single essay was
written. The Press is, and has long been, a profoundly important advocate of
Appalachian writing, and I have difficulty expressing the pride I feel in knowing
that the same press that published reprints of Elizabeth Madox Roberts's The Time
ofM an and James Still's River ofE arth is also publisher of Bloodroot.
I am grateful to Ronald and Nola Osborn, Richard Dyer, Dave Dyer and
Janice McCormick, Edward and Prudence Dyer, and Paul and Edith Steurer for
the generous ways they've supported my work. I thank Daniel Osborn Dyer, my
husband. We have traveled a million roads together, including the mountain roads
of my past. His sweetness and humor are boundless. And I thank Stephen Osborn
Dyer, my son, who will soon write his own books, and to whom I leave the pre
cious legacy of the Coynes and Haberkosts.
In memory, I thank my parents and my grandparents for their love and their
stories and their good lives. Their memory teaches me that a book, like a life, has
neither a clear beginning nor a clear end. This volume, I hope, is unfinished.
More and more Appalachian women writers will emerge on the scene every day.
And those writers, perhaps, will gather courage to persist from the words of the
women here who light their way.