#Appalachian literature

[pawpawholler]

A whole mood.

[keithmaillard]

The Talking West Virginia Blues

In folk music a “floating” verse is one that floats around and appears in lots of songs. When you’re singing a tune and you’ve sung all the verses you know but you don’t want to quit yet, you might throw in a floating verse—like this one: Oh, the winds they do whistle, And the waters do moan. I’m a poor boy in trouble. I’m a long way from home. I’m quoting folk tunes from memory here, so I may be…

[niibaataa]

Appalachia, Mon Amour

[Note: there are more extensive lists out there, but through personal criteria, this is what I came up with.]

Map of Appalachia:

Frank X Walker, born in Danville, Kentucky, coined the term "Affrilachia" to refer to African-Americans in the region and give a name to their experiences. He also co-founded the Affrilachian Poets. He offers educational training on his website.

Here is a list of his books. These include known titles like Love House, Affrilachia, and Black Box.

Lisa Alther, from Kingsport, Tennessee, is a prolific fiction writer whose work often contains lesbian and bisexual characters. Several titles are linked below.

Other Women, Kinflicks, Swan Song.

Harriette Simpson Arnow was born in Wayne County, Kentucky. She worked as a teacher and principal in rural Appalachia for two years. She would go on to write her first novel in 1936, drawing on her experiences in the region. Future works would carry story tones of moving and fraught lives which would strike cords with Appalachian readers.

Hunter's Horn, The Dollmaker, The Weedkiller's Daughter.

Pinckney Benedict is a short-story writer, playwright, and novelist. He was born in Greenbriar County, West Virginia. His work is strongly influenced by his Appalachian background. His first novel, Dogs of God, was published in 1995 and he has gone on to publish three short story collections.

Dogs of God, Town Smokes, Wrecking Yard.

Harry M. Caudill was born in Whitesburg, Kentucky. Caudill was a World War 2 veteran critical of the approaches taken in Appalachian mining. He was also critical of the power wielded by northeastern investors in these mines. In his later years he became a eugenicist, believing William Shockley's theory of dysgenics (the idea that "unintelligent" people weaken a race over time). He published multiple books concerning law and his home area of the Cumberlands Plateau.

Night Comes to the Cumberlands, The Watches of The Night, A Darkness at Dawn.

Wilma Dykeman grew up in Buncombe County, North Carolina. She married her husband, James R. Stokely Jr, two months after meeting him. This occurred shortly after her graduation from Northwestern University. She authored multiple novels and family epics, tracing decisions through time. The Wilma Dykeman Award exists to promote writers discussing connection, Appalachia, and religion. Urban News provides support for writers of color.

The Tall Woman, The Far Family, Return the Innocent Earth.

Denise Giardina was born in Bluefield, West Virginia. She grew up in the Black Wolf coal mining camp located in McDowell County. Her family's survival was heavily dependent on the mine's prosperity. Politically active and frequently writing about Appalachian labor conflicts, she experienced clashes with the superiors of an Episcopalian she attempted to lead in West Virginia over her labor views.

Storming Heaven, The Unquiet Earth.

Homer Hadley Hickam Jr was born in Coalwood, West Virginia. He is a Vietnam War veteran, author, and former NASA engineer. His 1998 memoir Rocket Boys was the basis for the 1999 movie October Sky. He has a diverse body of work. His Coalwood series is about Appalachia and consists of memoirs about his hometown.

Rocket Boys, The Coalwood Way, Sky of Stone.

Silas House was born in Corbin, Kentucky, and grew up in nearby Laurel County. He also spent much of his childhood in Leslie County. He is one of the most prominent voices of LGBTQ+ Appalachians and Southerners in Southern literature.

Clay's Quilt, A Parchment of Leaves, The Coal Tattoo.

Sharryn McCrumb is a Southern writer. Born in Wilmington, North Carolina, she is best known for her Appalachian Ballad series, which weaves folklore in with historical events.

If I Ever Return, Pretty Peggy-O, The Hangman's Beautiful Daughter, She Walks These Hills.

Mary Noailles Murfree was born near Murfreesboro, Tennessee on a cotton plantation. She is considered to be Appalachia's first significant female writer. Her work does reinforce negative stereotypes of the region and the influence of her social standing on her work is notable. She wrote under the pen name Charles Egbert Craddock.

The Windfall, In the Tennessee Mountains, In the Clouds.

Karl Dewey Myers was born in Tucker County, West Virginia. He was physically disabled, never walked, and required a special typewriter to write. He was denied formal education, resulting in him being self-taught. His first poetry collection was The Quick Years, analysis of which exists in literary journals.

The Quick Years. Little is written about his second poetry collection, Cross and Crown, published shortly before his death in 1951.

Breece D'J Pancake was a short-story writer born in Milton, West Virginia. The location is the inspiration for his multiple short stories, published in The Atlantic Monthly and other periodicals during his lifetime. He passed due to suicide at age 26. Chuck Palahniuk claims him as an influence.

Stories of Breece D'J Pancake (collected short stories), Trilobites, Time and Again.

Ann Pancake was born in Richmond, Virginia. Her family has strong roots in West Virginia and Appalachia. She grew up in Summersville, West Virginia. Her family includes filmmaker Chet Pancake and actor Sam Pancake. She is a distant relative of the writer Breece Pancake. Writing stories centering rural poverty and the historical roots of poverty in general. She teaches Appalachian fiction and environmental criticism. She recently resigned from West Virginia University in protest of budget cuts.

Strange as This Weather Has Been, Me and My Daddy Listen to Bob Marley (short stories and novellas), Given Ground.

Carter Sickels grew up in Ohio and, as an adult, moved around to various cities. His work captures a homesickness for the place one grew up while balancing any complicated feelings one may have about the area. An interview on the subject by Megan Kruse can be found here.

The Evening Hour, The Prettiest Star.

Hubert Skidmore was a writer born Webster Springs, West Virginia, his twin brother Hobert Skidmore was also a novelist. He is best known for his social protest novel Hawk's Nest. He died in a house fire in 1946.

A list of his other books can be found here.

Crystal Wilkinson was born in Hamilton, Ohio. She is a member of the Affrilachia collective. With experience in media and public relations, her transition to poet and professor of creative writing was smooth. She is the first Black woman to be Kentucky's Poet Laureate, a position she was appointed to in 2021.

Praisesong for Kitchen Ghosts, Blackberries, Blackberries (poetry collection), The Birds of Opulence.

Jim Webb was born in Jenkins, Kentucky, he was an Appalachian poet, writer, and essayist. He was a founding member of the Southern Appalachian Writers Cooperative. Transcriptions of the interviews with founding members can be found here. He spent three decades managing the radio show, "Ridin' Around Listenin' to the Radio With Wiley Quixote", a literary persona he created of a mountain character critical of strip-mining for coal and used self-deprecating humor. Much of his literary output has been destroyed due to three house fires.

Radio component of Appalashop.

SPECIAL FEATURE — CHILDREN'S LIT

Rebecca Caudill was born in Cumberland, Kentucky. She graduated from Wesleyan College in Georgia and received a degree in international relations from Vanderblit University. Her stories about Appalachia are filled with warmth and focused on the pioneer era of the 19th and 20th centuries. She loved the culture of Appalachia.

A list of her books is available here.

Cynthia Rylant was born in Hopewell, West Virginia. She was sent to live with her maternal grandparents in Coal Ridge, West Virgina after her parents divorced. She eventually moved back in with her mother in Beaver, West Virginia. After university, she worked as a librarian and became acquainted with children's books, something absent in her own childhood. She has written dozens of books for children and young readers.

A list of her books is available here.

[pawpawholler]

I found a minute, so I wanted to add to my reblog in support of OP. I know it's tough for a lot of non-Appalachians to understand, but Appalachians do, in fact, have our own cultural traditions. And, yes, "Appalachians" include, but are not limited to, the indigenous Native Americans of the area.

These cultural touchstones are not often taught in schools (see also: the school textbook wars and corporate control of school textbooks), but we carry them on nonetheless, and as OP stated, they're primarily an oral tradition.

Some outsider coming in and using our cultural touchstones as fodder for their own entertainment is cultural appropriation, no two ways about it. As is often the case for rural Appalachians, everything from our lungs to our stories are exploited to benefit outsiders.

Insult added to injury, the exploiters can't even get it right. I refuse to read stories set in Appalachia written by non-Appalachians because I am inevitably enraged. We're not some fantasy land that authors can bend to fit the needs of their story--we exist. We're real people in a real place, with our own values, history, dialects, and literature, which does, in fact, include oral traditions of stories about haints.

In the vernacular of my people, all them exploiters chap my ass. They can fuck right off.

what do you think of all of the people being scared of appalachia? i don't know if this is recent or not, but currently i've been seeing a ton of shit online like "never go to the appalachian mountains, it's so dangerous", and i just don't understand it. my family's lived in appalachia for forever, and none of us have experienced anything paranormal or endangering to us. you're one of my favorite blogs on here and i'd just like to hear your thoughts on it

first off, it means a lot that i'm one of your favorite blogs and im really happy i can contribute something to your experience here :') thanks so much for being here <333

but ok so.

my thoughts on it are many. it's been bothering me a long time and i've been meaning to get it off my chest. this will be long and probably ranty, so it won't hurt my feelings if anyone skims lol

lemme preface this little diatribe by saying the obvious: folklore is an integral part of any culture. the mythos of a place/people is tied directly to their histories and unique experiences and struggles and they are enriching. this is true of appalachia too.

oral folk traditions especially are incredibly historically appalachian.

i mentioned in a post i made yesterday about murder ballads, how the purpose of these was to warn kids away from doing dumb shit and getting lost in the hollers--falling down cliffs n mineshafts and shit at night. gettin got by wildlife.

it spooked us safe. they served a purpose, and once you got old enough to realize they're as real as the tooth fairy, they just become enjoyable and nostalgic. because they're you're culture.

probably every mountain kid has stories about haints n boogers that were told to them by their grandparents, and they grow up to tell them to their own kids, and so on. some of it stuck with me because i grew up with the folklore.

by that i mean, i'm a whole 31 year old woman and i still avoid looking out a dark window at night cause it gives me the shivers. i still get spooked when i hear a big cat yowling in the woods. but the difference is i know there's not really haints out there crying--it's just a product of my childhood. ghost stories are fun.

the problem comes in when someone outside the culture gets their hands on appalachian oral folk traditions. then, it becomes a familiar problem: outsiders cherry picking appalachia and harming us with the mess they make rifling through it all.

it's all about the surface level and the visuals. they all love a good aesthetic blog, run by some local from out west or some shit who's never stepped foot here.

but as soon as the spooky photo filters come off and the real life marginalized person is left standing there just out of frame, we go back to being disgusting examples of what not to be. decrepit churches n buildings are aesthetic and quirky until they stop being on a pinterest board, and then they just become damning images of an impoverished region who deserves to be laughed at.

now, not to holler 'splain you--this is more for anyone not from here who might read this: it's been a systemic issue for decades; there were literal government campaigns to demonize us to the rest of the nation so they could garner support to cut into our mountains and exploit our labor and resources.

well, they were fuckin successful, and we have been falsely made out to be this homogenous nightmare of a place--"welfare exploiting" maga country who deserves everything we get, and nothing we don't.

by going so far as to take appalachian folklore that we tell each other and picking out the "aesthetic" stuff--the haints and general paranormal--they are pruning what they like from our culture--the safe things, like ghost stories--for their own aesthetic use.

but not only that, they are using it to demonize us… yet again.

'appalachia is scary. it's full of things that will kill you. don't look out the window at night cause a booger will get you.' only they don't call them boogers cause they ain't even from here. ask them what a haint is and they'll ask if u mispelled 'haunt.'

it gets even worse when you consider that so much of it has roots in native american culture, and how that continues to be exploited and misrepresented.

i'm not even innocent of that. a while back i had to check myself because i made a comment on here about ~spooky appalachia~ ignorant to the fact that what i was commenting on was actually a deeply important cultural and spiritual element to local indigenous tribes. my comments were harmful by my failure to educate myself and know better, thereby saying things carelessly.

my point being--i'm from the area. i should have known better.

when outsiders start saying the kind of shit they say about what they think they hear in the woods without even knowing where such an idea comes from, they're disrespecting a displaced, abused and exploited people, harming real cultures just for clicks without even knowing. that's on top of the damage they're doing to greater appalachia.

it's fuckin gross.

i think my favorite one i ever seen was this middle aged white lady going through her pristine mcmansion somewhere in suburbia, pulling the million curtains and locking the million doors, going "nighttime routine in appalachia!! 🤪🤪"

i could be wrong about this particular person--i didn't check their other tiktoks because im sick of them accounts and tired of giving them the benefit of the doubt--but it immediately came off as a transplant because:

1) mcmansion, 2) i dont know nobody here that locks their shit down like that (not locking up could even be argued as a part of my local culture, a reflection of our deep sense of community and trust in our neighbors).

and then the comments was all like "i don't know how you guys live there" and it actually broke my heart and pissed me off because even if--especially if--you're one of us, why the fuck are you harming us for likes? why are you turning people against us in a brand new way?

and to the transplants that do this--why?

you're not even from here, you moved here to this place you hate and made it worse just so your front porch would have a nice view, and are now benefiting socially from perpetuating bullshit about us?

you buy up all the land, land we often had no choice but to sell in the first place to survive instead of passing it on to our families, land we originally took from the indigenous peoples your content comes from.

you overdevelop it and turn it unrecognizable to make it more like the comfortable cities you come from. you gut a mountain town of its local businesses and cultures, you price people out of their homes...

...and then once you settle in all cozy like, you go tell everyone else how scary it is? how you can't trust the hills? like it's a cool paranormal bravery badge to wear? fuck off entirely.

so idk, in short my personal thoughts are: i personally enjoy a little myth as a treat, because the folklore is a part of the gothic, a part of our culture and a part of my childhood. i don't (intentionally) wield it as a weapon or use it as a pedestal to get the weird brand of attention that people like them are after.

and those who do this can get got by them haints for all i care.

[dustyaulos]

[blackmamba-0]

“Talking nonsense is the sole privilege mankind possesses over the other organisms. It's by talking nonsense that one gets to the truth! I talk nonsense, therefore I'm human” -Fyodor Dostoevsky

[agirlnamedbone]

Robert Lynn Wood (Mothman Apologia, 2022)

[bdapublishing]

Meet Beth, a love-struck wine lover with a pet peeve for bad drivers 🍷

Welcome to a world where magic is real, monsters exist, and nightmares come true. KP Roberson’s folk horror novel Between the Birches: Awakening invites you into the complex life of Beth. Imagine celebrating your 25th birthday caught in a terrifying love triangle and battling an ancient evil... that’s Beth’s life.

Coming this March 19th!

[jb-nonsense]

I just said "there been birds flitting about" and that is the most hilarious smash up of various English linguistics I have heard

[localhollerhaint]

Character design for my upcoming children's book 🥰 in the illustration phase of things.

[pawpawholler]

Once again, really fucking annoying when people treat Appalachia like Atlantis, a mystical, mysterious place that doesn’t actually exist and they can play with, like we’re fucking paper dolls.

Try thinking of a place with a population the size of Florida’s, spread across 1/4 of the contiguous US, bound by a common poverty borne of extractive unfettered capitalism, and you can see how outsiders extracting our fucking culture for their own fucking benefit is maybe not fucking OK.

[thecreaturecodex]

There are some pretty good pieces of tailypo art out there now, but this is still my favorite for its vague menace, the bear-like claws and the sheer nostalgia factor. A gallery of other tailypos for your perusal...

Image © DeviantArt user Kravuus, accessed at his gallery here. Probably my favorite overall, although I wish the paws were more clearly prehensile.

A tailypo combining features of foxes and opossums, © @a-book-of-creatures, accessed at their site here

A stylishly vague tailypo with striking eyes, © @dailycryptodrawings, accessed here

A very American McGee's Alice in Wonderland tailypo, which makes me think tailypos are sort of an evil equivalent of Cheshire Cats. © deviantArt user streetartist123, accessed at her gallery here

This tailypo plays up the primate aspects; it looks a lot like a murderous bushbaby to me. © deviantArt user eadiletsum, accessed at their gallery here

Traci Shepard's tailypo is the most raccoonish of the lot, although there's definitely some bobcat in the face and ears. © Traci Shepard, accessed at Arcane Beasts and Critters here

And lastly, the cutest goddamn tailypo you ever did see, © deviantArt user draemora, accessed at her gallery here.

Tailypo

Image from The Tailypo: A Ghost Story © Joanna Galdone and Paul Galdone. Accessed here

[You want to know what scares the monster maker? Here you go. My mom read this book to my sister and I as a bedtime story when we were around 5 and 6. And we couldn’t get to sleep all night. No version I could find online was nearly as creepy as the original picture book, so with the picture book I went.]

Tailypo CR 3 NE Magical Beast Stalking forth from the darkness is a beast that combines the features of a wolf, an ape and a big cat. Its paws bear some resemblance to human hands and its face is dominated by staring, owlish eyes and tall ears with tufts like a bobcat’s. A long and furry tail waves in the air behind it.

Bestial backwoods predators, the hybrid creatures known as tailypos are far more cunning than their appearance would indicate. Their hunting strategy is unusual in that it involves a sacrifice of their own body parts, like a lizard shedding its tail. Any creature that takes the bait is stalked unceasingly by the tailypo, who strikes when its target is most vulnerable. They prefer to hunt sentient prey for the challenge, and their nimble paws allow them to open doors and use tools in order to terrorize and kill a victim.

Tailypos are territorial and drive away or kill other predators in their ranges, such as big cats, wolves and bears. Tailypos spend most of their lives in solitude, only meeting with others of their own kind in order to mate and raise offspring. A female tailypo will give birth to a litter of two to six cubs, which grow to maturity over the course of a year. Tailypo cubs are prized for their tracking abilities and can fetch up to 2,000 gp on the open market, but such purchases are highly risky due to the tailypo’s cunning and evil disposition. A tailypo grows to eight feet long, with about half of that length being tail.

Keep reading

[probablybadrpgideas]

Announcing new damage types!

Conceptual (specific brand of Psychic damage for otherworldly art, literature, perusing eldritch archives)

Automotive (caused by motor vehicles)

Appalachian (dealt by the Appalachians and any beings originating therefrom)

Political (easier than tracking Reputation between factions, just take Political damage directly to your HP if you screw up)

Mozzarella (exactly what it sounds like)

Digestive (splitting up from Poison; ingested Poisons now deal Digestive, while poisoned weaponry and beasts do Venom

Ragtime

­

[psychotrenny]

Self-Indigenisation is something that I brought up on an earlier post and I think it’s something more people should be aware of. It describes the way that Settler populations will claim Indigenous identities for themselves in order to justify their presence on the land and mistreatment of actually Indigenous populations. This can include using tenuous or even outright fabricated Lineal connections to indigenous peoples in order to claim membership to a group they have no social or cultural ties to. The most well-known example in North America are USAmericans who claim that their grandmother was a “Cherokee Princess” or something of the like in an attempt to buttress their identity as being in some way more impressive or “authentic”. Another example I’ve read about is White Quebecois (who at most might have a very distant indigenous ancestor, and sometimes not even then) with no connection to Indigenous communities claiming indigenous identity in order to launch lawsuits over land rights, sometimes even to the direct detriment of actually indigenous communities. Self-Indigenisation can also include claims that a particular settler population itself has some deep enough connection to the land that it can be considered indigenous. In South East Australia in the 1930s you had locally born Settlers explicitly assert themselves as the original inhabitants of the land and the actual indigenous peoples as nothing more than peripheral transients. The idea of US Appalachian settler populations being some sort of indigenous people has become a recurring one in scholarship and activism in the region and serves as way to assert the rightfulness of their ownership of the land even in a progressive and supposedly anti-colonial context. I haven’t personally read it myself but apparently the book Distorted Descent by Darryl Leroux does a pretty good job of exploring Self-Indigenisation in contemporary Canada.

While most of the literature on the subject I could find focused on North America*, this process if far from unique to that region. Indeed, Self-Indigenisation is one of the major rhetorical strategies used to justify the continued existence of Israel especially in more “progressive” spaces. Like hell even just being active on tumblr recently is going to expose you to numerous Zionist claiming that the Israelis are the true natives of Palestine and that the Palestinian Arabs are merely “squatters”. “Zionism means Landback” and other such nonsense. To be clear there is very much an indigenous Jewish population in Palestine, the “Old Yishuv” Shepardim, but the Settlers who established the state of Israel are very not much it not it no matter how much they try and construct such an identity (such as by suppressing traditionally spoken Jewish languages like Yiddish and replacing them with a reconstructed for of Hebrew) or repute the identity of indigenous Arabs. Essentially self-indigenisation is an especially heinous tool that Settler populations use to evict indigenous peoples on a spiritual level in order to maintain their physical displacement. Such rhetoric must be resisted and discredited as much as possible lest it’s able to have its intended effect

*I suppose it makes sense given that I was only looking at English-language literature and that region is home to the most populous of Anglo settler states

[icaruspendragon]

Hi Berk! I'm Sam - I've been really inspired by your content and have actually started an MA with the intention of doing my thesis on the devaluation of fanfiction as a (mostly)misogynistic exclusion from adapted, self-insert, and folk literature. If you're open to it, I would love to pick your brain on the culture around fic, especially as it relates to casual and/or Appalachian storytelling. Let me know what you think! I hope you're well and having a fun Halloween season in the meantime :)

i can’t think of a single thing i hat j would like more, actually. :’)

send me an email and we’ll get everything sorted out!!

[starrrbakerrr]

“star-crossed lovers”

I have a thought that might have been discussed before, but Katniss and Peeta are referred to as “star-crossed lovers” by the Capitol. “Star-crossed lovers” was coined by Shakespeare in the prologue of his play Romeo and Juliet. When I think of star-crossed lovers my mind goes to the archetypal forbidden love of Romeo and Juliet, which mirrors the narrative the Capitol creates between Peeta and Katniss.

As we know, Romeo and Juliet is a text from centuries ago. We don’t know how far into the future Panem is – I always imagine at least 100 year in the future. We know very little of Panem’s history before the Dark Days, such as how long Panem has existed, but it’s safe to say at least 100 years.

I can’t find this quote for the life of me. I might have imagined it lol, but if I remember correctly, early in Mockingjay Plutarch tells Katniss about their plans for society after the rebellion. Plutarch says in “old history books” there’s something called ✨democracy✨ that they want to use. (side note: I remember Katniss saying something like ��it led to where we are now” and that’s why I want to find it so badly lol)

So we know that the government of Panem are aware of the political history of the United States. But how would they know the term “star-crossed lovers”? District children are only taught their trade and Panem propaganda, so they wouldn’t know history before the Dark Days or what “star-crossed lovers” are. As for the Capitol citizens and children, they may have more freedom in education but I can’t imagine them knowing anything about North American society before Panem (they are even more susceptible to Panem propaganda), so how would they know about European literature? And we also know that Capitol citizens are more shallow and self-obsessed than they are intelligent so I can’t imagine them reading a book, much less Shakespeare.

It seems by the first Hunger Games novel all history of what existed before Panem has been destroyed except what little information the government had on the US. Sort of like the Nazis burning books and art - art, newspapers, books, monuments, and many artifacts are all gone. The progression of technology lasted, a lot Appalachian culture still exists in D12, the land somehow persisted, music/dance styles evolved, but it appears no one really is certain what American society was. And it seems that Panem exists in total isolation from other continents so it doesn’t make complete sense for Romeo and Juliet, a European text, to be passed down as oral history, thus for Panem to know what “star-crossed lovers” are.

I thought very far into this (probably more than it should be), but my only explanation is that Shakespeare is either ~timeless~ and the play still exists somehow, or maybe it’s a term that is still thrown around but no one really knows where it came from.