Readin, Writin, and Rt' 23: Appalachia in the Classroom

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Readin, Writin, and Rt. 23 Appalachia in the
Classroom

• Barbara L. Kunkle, Ph.D.
• February 3, 2005

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AppalachiaWhat is it? Where is it?

• Geographical Definitions
• Cultural Definitions
• Political Definitions
• Literary Definitions

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Appalachian Literature--Myths

• Only minor writers are Appalachian
• Regional writing is merely local color
• Any masterful writer becomes southern or
  American

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Appalachian LiteratureWhat Qualifies?

• Lee Pennington (Greenup County poet)
• Appalachia is not what it is but what it was, and
  it never was.

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Appalachian LiteratureWhat Qualifies?

• James Still (Kentucky poet)
• Appalachia is a sort of myth, an imaginary
  place.

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Appalachian LiteratureWhat Qualifies?

• Anne Shelby (teacher and critic)
• The literature represents neither the expression
  of a distinct regional subculture nor the
  bringing together of an incoherent patchwork of
  second-rate writing it represents the literary
  expression of an American myth

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Appalachian LiteratureWhat Qualifies?

• Henry D. Shapiro
• From Appalachia on Our Mind The Southern
  Mountains and Mountaineers in the American
  Consciousness, 18701920 (1978)
• This is not a history of Appalachia. It is a
  history of the idea of Appalachia, and therefore
  the invention of Appalachia.

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Appalachian LiteratureWhat Qualifies?

• Gurney Norman (writer, teacher, central figure in
  flowering of Appalachian literature since the
  1980s)
• Norman sees region in terms of shared cultural or
  historical experience. His vision is inclusive.

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Appalachian LiteratureWhat Qualifies?

• Frank X. Walker (African-American poet)
• If you think makin shine from corn
• is hard as Kentucky coal
• Imagine being
• an Affrilachian poet

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Appalachian LiteratureNot a field until the 1970s

• Contribution of Cratis Williams, Father of
  Appalachian Studies

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History of Appalachian Literature 1870-1910

• Popular magazines of late 19th century
• Will Wallace Harney, A Strange Land and
  Peculiar People, Lippincotts Magazine 12
  (1873), pp. 4229-4438.
• William Frost, Our Contemporary Ancestors in
  the Southern Appalachians, Atlantic Monthly 83
  (March 1899), pp. 311-319.

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History of Appalachian Literature 1870-1910

• Missionaries
• Joseph E. Roy, Americans of the Midland
  Mountains (New York American Missionary
  Association, 1891)

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History of Appalachian Literature 1870-1910

• Early fiction about Southern Mountaineers
• Charles Egbert Craddock
• Mary N. Murfree, The Romance of Sunrise Rock,
  Atlantic Monthly 46 (1880), pp. 775-786.
• ___. In the Tennessee Mountains. Boston
  Houghton, Mifflin, 1884.

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History of Appalachian Literature 1870-1910

• John Fox, Jr. develops the turf and the type
• A Mountain Europa (1899)
• Blue-Grass and Rhododendron (1901)
• The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come (1903)
• The Trail of the Lonesome Pine (1908)

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Depression Era 1920s-40s

• Elizabeth Madox Roberts, The Time of Man (1926)
• Thomas Wolfe, Look Homeward Angel (1929)
• Harriette Arnow, Mountain Path (1936)
• Mildred Haun, The Hawks Done Gone (1940)
• James Agee, A Death in the Family

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Depression Era 1920s-40s

• Jesse Stuart, Man with a Bull-Tongue Plow (1834)
• James Still, River of Earth

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Post-World War II

• Mary Lee Settle, The Beulah Quintet
• Asa (Forest) Carter, The Education of Little Tree
• Davis Grubb, Night of the Hunter
• Harriette Arnow, The Dollmaker (1952)
• James Dickey, Deliverance
• Billy C. Clark

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Post-1960s

• Fred Chappell
• Cormac McCarthy
• Denise Giardina
• Robert Morgan
• Gurney Norman
• Breece Pancake
• Lee Smith
• Sharyn McCrumb

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Best-Selling Appalachian Novels

• The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come (1903 and
  1904)
• The Trail of the Lonesome Pine (1908 and 1909)
• Of Time and the River (1935)
• Cold Mountain (1997)
• probably others, as well

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John Fox, Jr.

• Excerpts from Blue-Grass and Rhododendron (1901)
• The Southern Mountaineer

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A Great Internet Site

• Award-Winning website for teaching Appalachian
  literature in the classroom
• http//www.ferrum.edu/applit

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John Fox, Jr.

• See Applit website for an excellent study guide
  for John Fox, Jr., The Trail of the Lonesome
  Pine, by Judy A. Teaford of Mountain State
  University.
• Full text of novel (Project Gutenberg Edition) is
  available on line.

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James Still

• Spring (p.29)
• Heritage (p. 82)
• From The Wolfpen Poems (1937)

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Frank X. Walker

• Affrilachia
• Affrilachia (p. 92)

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Resource

• Applit website has extensive lists of Appalachian
  books for young people, along with links, study
  guides, and lesson plans.
• Example Celebrating Diversity in Appalachia