The Tangled Roots of Feminism, Environmentalism, and Appalachian Literature

[theHandpuppet]

Book recommendation cross-posted from Appalachia Group.

The Ohio University Press
The Tangled Roots of Feminism, Environmentalism, and Appalachian Literature
Pub. 2003
By Elizabeth S. D. Engelhardt

Contemporaries were shocked when author Mary Noailles Murfree revealed she was a woman, but modern readers may be more surprised by her cogent discussion of community responses to unwanted development. Effie Waller Smith, an African American woman writing of her love for the Appalachian mountains, wove discussions of women's rights, racial tension, and cultural difference into her Appalachian poetry. Grace MacGowan Cooke participated in avant-garde writers' colonies with the era's literary lights and applied their progressive ideals to her fiction about the Appalachia of her youth. Emma Bell Miles, witness to poverty, industrialization, and violence against women, wrote poignant and insightful critiques of her Appalachian home.

In The Tangled Roots of Feminism, Environmentalism, and Appalachian Literature Elizabeth Engelhardt finds in all four women's writings the origins of what we recognize today as ecological feminism—a wide-reaching philosophy that values the connections between humans and nonhumans and works for social and environmental justice.

People and the land in Appalachia were also the subject of women authors with radically different approaches to mountains and their residents. Authors with progressive ideas about women's rights did not always respect the Appalachian places they were writing about or apply their ideas to all of the women in those places—but they did create hundreds of short stories, novels, letters, diaries, photographs, sketches, and poems about the mountains.

While The Tangled Roots of Feminism, Environmentalism, and Appalachian Literature ascribes much that is noble to the beginnings of the ecological feminism movement as it developed in Appalachia, it is also unyielding in its assessment of the literatures of the voyeur, tourist, and social crusader who supported status quo systems of oppression in Appalachia.

For more information about this book, see http://www.ohioswallow.com/book/The+Tangled+Roots+of+Feminism,+Environmentalism,+and+Appalachian+Literature

[enough]

1. What an interesting and convoluted subject. Thanks for the post. (nt)

[theHandpuppet]

2. Yeah, that's what caught my attention, too

I'm not sure how the author managed to weave that tapestry but am definitely going to pick up a copy.

[theHandpuppet]

3. There are some relatively inexpensive copies available via Amazon

http://www.amazon.com/Feminism-Environmentalism-Appalachian-Literature-Ethnicity/dp/0821415093

[niyad]

4. k and r and thank you for this very interesting post.

[theHandpuppet]

5. You're very welcome!

Women have played such a prominent role in every facet of Appalachian history I try as much as possible to showcase women activists, artists, pioneers, educators et al at Appalachia Group. So many fabulous women and their contributions must never be forgotten, only rediscovered and celebrated.

[niyad]

6. . . .

[ismnotwasm]

7. Thank for this

Sounds fascinating

[theHandpuppet]

8. Here's another book some might find interesting

Again, a new copy of this book is expensive but there are inexpensive used copies available at Amazon.

Whistlin' and Crowin' Women of Appalachia: Literacy Practices Since College
by Associate Professor Katherine Kelleher Sohn
(Studies in Writing & Rhetoric) Hardcover – March 2, 2006

Foreward
Even some enlightened academicians automatically—and incorrectly—connect illiteracy to Appalachia, contends Katherine Kelleher Sohn. After overhearing two education professionals refer to the southern accent of a waiter and then launch into a few redneck jokes, Sohn wondered why rural, working-class white people are not considered part of the multicultural community. Whistlin’ and Crowin’ Women of Appalachia: Literacy Practices since College examines the power of women to rise above cultural constraints, complete their college degrees, assume positions of responsibility, and ultimately come to voice.

Sohn, a born southerner and assimilated Appalachian who moved from the city more than thirty years ago, argues that an underclass of rural whites is being left out of multicultural conversations. She shares how her own search for identity in the academic world (after enrolling in a doctoral program at age fifty) parallels the journeys of eight nontraditional, working-class women. Through interviews and case studies, Sohn illustrates how academic literacy empowers women in their homes, jobs, and communities, effectively disproving the Appalachian adage: “Whistlin’ women and crowin’ hens, always come to no good ends.”

Sohn situates the women’s stories within the context of theory, self confidence, and place. She weaves the women’s words with her own, relating voice to language, identity, and power. As the women move from silence to voice throughout and after college—by maintaining their dialect, discovering the power of expressivist writing, gaining economic and social power, and remaining in their communities—they discover their identity as strong women of Appalachia.

Sohn focuses on the power of place, which figures predominantly in the identity of these women, and colorfully describes the region. These Appalachian women who move from silence to voice are the purveyors of literacy and the keepers of community, says Sohn. Serving as the foundation of Appalachian culture in spite of a patriarchal society, the women shape the region even as it shapes them....