#hainted

[burins]

I know this is the Take Personal Responsibility for Systemic Issues website, but I keep seeing weirdly guilt trippy posts about libraries and ebook licenses, which are a labyrinth from hell and not actually something you personally need to feel guilty about. here are a few facts about ebook licenses you may not know:

in Libby/Overdrive, which currently operates in most US public libraries, ebook licenses vary widely in how much they cost and what their terms are. some ebooks get charged per use, some have a set number of uses before the license runs out, and others have a period of time they're good for (usually 1-2 years) with unlimited checkouts during that period before they expire. these terms are set by the publisher and can also vary from book to book (for instance, a publisher might offer two types of licenses for a book, and we might buy one copy of a book with a set number of uses we want to have but know won't move as much, and another copy with a one year unlimited license for a new bestseller we know will be really moving this year.)

you as a patron have NO way of knowing which is which.

ebook licenses are very expensive compared to physical books! on average they run about 60 bucks a pop, where the same physical book would cost us $10-15 and last us five to ten years (or much longer, if it's a hardcover that doesn't get read a lot.)

if your library uses Hoopla instead, those are all pay per use, which is why many libraries cap checkouts at anywhere between 2-10 per month.

however.

this doesn't mean you shouldn't use ebooks. this doesn't mean you should feel guilty about checking things out! we buy ebook licenses for people to use them, because we know that ebook formats are easier for a lot of people (more accessible, more convenient, easier for people with schedules that don't let them get into the library.) these are resources the library buys for you. this is why we exist. you don't need to feel guilty about using them!

things that are responsible for libraries being underfunded and having to stretch their resources:

government priorities and systemic underfunding of social services that don't turn a profit and aren't easily quantified

our society's failure to value learning and pleasure reading for their own sake

predatory ebook licensing models

things that are not responsible for libraries being underfunded:

individual patron behavior

I promise promise promise that your personal library use is not making or breaking your library's budget. your local politicians are doing that. capitalism is doing that. you are fine.

(if you want to help your local library, the number one thing you can do is to advocate for us! talk to your city or county government about how much you like the library. or call or write emails or letters. advocate for us locally. make sure your state reps know how important the library is to you. there are local advocacy groups in pretty much every state pushing for library priorities. or just ask your local librarian. we like to answer questions!

also, if you're in Massachusetts, bill h3239 would make a huge difference in letting us negotiate ebook prices more fairly. tell your rep to vote for it!)

[jazzkrebber]

Kuwei: must be hard not being able to laugh

Wylan: I do have a sense of humor you know

Kuwei: I've never heard you laugh before

Wylan: I've never heard you say anything funny

[sleepynegress]

BELOVED - 1998

[heartshapedcaskett]

The night I took these I heard hissing in the woods and a horrendous wave of freezing air rushed over my body. The tell-tale signs of the Carolina haints my grandma spoke of.

[toomanyrats]

of ghosts and grief

[mumblelard]

not eaten by wolves

only my second card in a month and i pulled moon on the day of the harvest eclipse

i ate a slice of brown bread with butter and sea salt before bed last night. i slept so deeply, my morning limbs were stiff from lack of movement. my dreams were fast, constant, bright

i dreamt of a large church in the middle of a field of mowed clover, miles from the nearest road, surrounded by treeless mountains

a toddler jumped off a high cliff into a slow wide river and swam slowly downstream, searching for family

laying in the sun, on a roof thatched in the black fibres made from the muscle tissue of dead machines

a pregnant teapot, weeping quietly with tiny shudders of grief, lactating a milky brown tea

[sh1-n0bu]

NO THIS IS SO CURSED PLS NO MARII😭😭😭

WHERE R U FINDING THESE PICS

[ncwortcunning]

Haint Tree - North Carolina.

Blue bottles hanging from a tree are an old protection against devils and evil spirits. It is said that the bottles will trap these supernatural pests whereby they will be burned up in the sunlight. A Haint tree in your yard can protect your home from unwanted supernatural guests.

[mishacollinsthighsss]

I swear to God I live my normal life without a thought and I finally accepted that I AM crazy and that probably nothing happened behind the scenes of filming that cursed show and then some new information pops up and I'm right back where I was, going absolutely insane about the two gay characters that weren't on my screen for nearly three years

[conjuremanj]

Hoodoo Wind Chimes For Protection.

Example Photo

This is something you'll see in the more lower, swampy areas of the deep south like Louisiana, Mississippi, Georgia, but not so much the main cities.

The Bone Wind Chimes: These can be made from any type of bones you find or attracted to, you can find your own bones or buy your bones. Bones are a good juju (see post on jujus). These wind chimes are made to help keep Haints away or from entering your home.

Then say a protection prayer apon it.

[burins]

Other Appalachias: A Booklist

As requested, the anti-Hillbilly Elegy booklist, plus annotations! When possible I tried to include books that were by Appalachians and got at lesser-known aspects of Appalachian life and identity, especially modern Appalachian life. When creating the original list I was also limited by books that were in the library network I work at, which is a) a public library and b) not actually located in Appalachia. Y’all get some bonus titles that weren’t in my library - hopefully they’ll be in yours.

A note: I have not read every single book on this list! This is the nature of creating booklists as a librarian. I trust the sources I used to find them, but if there’s something on here that you’re like “oh I read this and it sucks actually,” let me know. And if there’s a particular aspect you’d like more books on, also let me know!

General

Appalachian Reckoning: A Region Responds to Hillbilly Elegy (Anthony Harkins and Meredith McCarroll, eds)

What You Are Getting Wrong About Appalachia by Elizabeth Catte

If you read any two books on this list (especially if you aren’t from Appalachia!) make it these two. The first one is a collection of essays and photographs, the second by a single author, but both are fantastic for the basics of “hey was your entire idea of a huge stretch of the US defined by Deliverance and some NYT op-eds? perhaps it should not be” 

Appalachian Fall: Dispatches from Coal Country on What's Ailing America by Jeff Young

Leans a little more “plight of the white working class” than I absolutely love, but this talks a lot about contemporary workers’ rights and local activism in Appalachia and is a good counter to Vance’s narrative of “everybody sits on their ass all the time.”

Belonging: A Culture of Place by bell hooks

Hey did you know bell hooks was from Kentucky? bell hooks was from Kentucky! As always her writing is deeply insightful about who is allowed to claim a place and what it means to have roots. 

Rx Appalachia: Stories of Treatment and Survival in Rural Kentucky by Lesly-Marie Buer 

The opioid crisis has defined the region (much as alcoholism came to during Prohibition); unlike a lot of writing on the topic, this lets people tell their own stories. 

Race and Sexuality

Another Appalachia: Coming Up Queer and Indian in a Mountain Place by Neema Avashia

Excellent counter to the narrative of Appalachia as unrelentingly white, and also painfully good writing on what happens when the folks you grew up counting on let you down. 

Loving Mountains, Loving Men: Memoirs of a Gay Appalachian by Jeff Mann

This 2005 memoir got a re-release in 2023, and thank god because it makes me cry. Really beautiful writing on what it means to come back to a place and carve out a space for yourself.

Y'all Means All: The Emerging Voices Queering Appalachia (Z. Zane McNeill, ed.) 

Another essay collection! There will be more; I like an essay collection for getting a sense of a subject beyond a single voice. Touches on everything from disability to race to Mothman. 

Deviant Hollers: Queering Appalachian Ecologies for a Sustainable Future, Zane McNeill and Rebecca Scott, eds. 

This wide-ranging collection of essays wasn’t on the original list because it’s pretty hard to come by (academic queer theory is not a bastion of your average public library collection.) Just based on the table of contents I am going to try and get my hands on a copy ASAP. 

Gone Home: Race and Roots through Appalachia by Karida L. Brown

Focuses specifically on Harlan County, Kentucky, drawing on a ton of oral history interviews of Black residents to talk about the Great Migration, Blackness in Appalachia, and identity formation in the region and beyond.

Beginning Again: Stories of Movement and Migration in Appalachia, Katrina M. Powell, ed. 

This just came out in June! In a place so often defined by how many generations of your family have lived there, it’s worth considering who gets removed from that story.  

Their Determination to Remain: A Cherokee Community's Resistance to the Trail of Tears in North Carolina by Lance Greene

The history of Appalachia is pretty obviously incomplete without talking about the policies of Indian Removal. Greene tackles a tangled story of assimilation and cultural survival. 

Even As We Breathe by Annette Saunooke Clapsaddle

The only fiction book on this list, but the main goal of the list was to let Appalachia speak for itself. Clapsaddle is a member of the Eastern band of Cherokee; the novel, set in western NC during the 1940s, talks about (in)justice, assimilation, and belonging. 

History, Labor, and Environment

You can’t talk about the history of Appalachia without talking about coal, and you can’t talk about coal without talking about labor, and you also can’t talk about coal without talking about the environment. 

Ramp Hollow: The Ordeal of Appalachia by Steven Stoll 

An economic/environmental overview of Appalachia covering the shift from homesteading to resource extraction. To understand what’s happening economically in 2024 you need to understand what happened economically in 1750-1850, and this gives a general and fairly accessible throughline. 

The Battle of Blair Mountain: The Story of America's Largest Labor Uprising by Robert Shogan

An older book on the most famous event of the West Virginia Mine Wars, but is a very readable narrative that also touches on Blair Mountain’s wider context.  

Written in Blood: Courage and Corruption in the Appalachian War of Extraction, Wess Harris, ed. 

A much more in-depth look at specific aspects of the Mine Wars and labor history, rather than a general overview, but worth reading for its coverage of more recent events (it didn’t end with Blair!)

To Live Here, You Have to Fight: How Women Led Appalachian Movements for Social Justice by Jessica Wilkerson

Focusing on the 60s-70s and LBJ’s War on Poverty, a good discussion of historical grassroots organizing.

Digging Our Own Graves: Coal Miners & the Struggle Over Black Lung Disease by Barbara Allen Smith

Seminal text! First published in 1987, with an updated edition released in 2020. 

Soul Full of Coal Dust: A Fight for Breath and Justice in Appalachia by Chris Hamby

After being mad about black lung in the 80s, you can also be mad about black lung today, because it didn’t go anywhere. 

Desperate: An Epic Battle for Clean Water and Justice in Appalachia by Kris Maher

Very “legal thriller focused on one guy,” but extremely readable. A great book to get your liberal mom fired up.  

Mountains Piled upon Mountains: Appalachian Nature Writing in the Anthropocene, Jessica Cory, ed.

This list has been almost entirely nonfiction, so here is some lovely prose about what folks love about the region with both literary nonfiction, fiction, and poetry. It’s got a wide geographic focus to boot. 

Food and Culture

Appalachia on the Table: Representing Mountain Food and People by Erica Adams Locklear

Great deconstruction of how we talk about mountain food and culture (scandal! Sometimes great-grandmas used Bisquick.) Will make you hungry and also question what authenticity means and where your family recipes actually come from. 

Making Our Future: Visionary Folklore and Everyday Culture in Appalachia by Emily Hilliard

West Virginia state folklorist Emily Hilliard talks about pro wrestling, Fallout 76, songwriting, and coal camps. Appalachia in the 21st century. 

(Finally, a shoutout to the various bookstores whose lists I used as jumping-off points, especially Appalachian Mountain Books, City Lights Bookstore, Firestorm Books, and the Museum of the Cherokee People.)

[fragmentedhekatean]

lmao I had a funny thought a bit ago because i was looking at Appalacian folklore since our family is originally from that area and its funny bec my grandmas porch was painted Haint Blue which is supposed to keep Haints or ghosts/evil spirits away and we live in IOWA

[tales-from-a-little-witch]

Tales from the red house: the first steps

Tw: talk of sa and child abuse

I don’t know why dad wanted us to move in this stupid fucking house. We had to move our old house away from all my friends and my old school all so we can move here.

At the fresh start, but I don’t know how fresh a start can be in a house like this. This has been in my dad’s family for over five generations. The house belong to my uncle Clayton, but he’s gone now he was the only good thing in the house now there’s nothing.

A lot of bad stuff happened in this house......lot of kids were hurt in ways that a child should never be hurt....

A lot of bad stuff happened to my dad and the siblings here, I know he doesn’t wanna be here, not really at least we only moved here because we were fucked out of our last house but the shitty landlord..

Seeing the house for the first time so long since Clayton died is hard. it’s not as bright and the energy just feels bad.. like it’s wrong without him...

Stepping into the house for the first time, it was so cold not just cold like house that was empty but cold, freezing cold like a ice box.

Don’t even get me started on the smell.. smells like rotten eggs and it just feels so heavy...like the air is heavy.. I’ve only felt that a few times and all those times were bad. I’m worried.

[thembloodybones]

There is a small child sitting at the base of a tree. waiting. holding a staff close to herself. Despite the yellow dress she wore, her boots were made for walking. and her skirt's hem was dusted with the grime of travel. -@3v3ryd00r

Hazamaveth watches her from the branches of a big old bitternut hickory. He clutches at the trunk with his front claws and back feet pressed into the bark; like a bat on a wall.

The girl is just a little slip of a thing; and so cute it makes his teeth ache. Not to mention; she doesn't seem afraid. In fact, she looks right at home, sitting under the bitternut tree.

And seeing such a darling thing has him feeling a bit ornery.

Daylight isn't the best for raising haints, but he's never been one to turn from a challenge.

He creeps down lower, as silent as a spider, and makes his breath as cold as a graveyard breeze, blowing down gently.

It travels the ten feet or so down to tickle the back of her neck.

[marsinthecorner]

Some folks say if you see a door in the woods, never go through it. Y'all never know wherr you may end up.

[lowcountry-gothic]

Haint blue in Leesburg, Florida.