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Essays of appalachia
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Many people have inexplicably portrayed Appalachian people, culture, and beliefs as outlandish, post-colonial, and debilitating to say the least. We have been represented as redneck, hillbilly, poor or lazy, and white-trash, with strong emphasis on the “white.” Writers like Denise Giardina, Frank X Walker, and others who created short stories within “Degrees of Elevation” work hard to debase the present-day stereotypes and work hard to guide people to the truth about Appalachia and the region. Appalachian literature, such as “Unquiet Earth” by Denise Giardina, “Affrilachia” by Frank X Walker, and short stories within “Degrees of Elevation” are all works of literature that can easily be characterized by many as realist texts created by authors …show more content…
Denise Giardina gives us a perspective of life led in Appalachia in West Virginia, through a diverse set of characters, each with their own unique characteristics and problems. By doing so, she allows the reader, whether being Appalachian or not, to have an insider perspective about why Appalachian’s feel so strongly about the destruction of their land. We see this in “The Unquiet Earth” with Rachel describing the devastation that the strip mines have caused and the influx of people leaving the area because of this, “I knew the machines and strip mines had taken the job of the miners, who were getting only one or two days’ work a week. Every day I drove past the empty houses they left behind when they moved to Ohio or Michigan. I saw the weed choked fields where entire camps were torn down to the foundations, saw the boarded-up stores and movie theaters in the smaller towns, the loaded coal trucks from the new strip mines rumbling through Justice like great iron elephants and shaking the buildings, as though the town was being ground to dust (Giardina, 116).” By Giardina including this passage, we can see how she and the character felt about the destruction of the town and land by the strip mining. This place where she has grown up and that was often referred to as “the home place” throughout …show more content…
Walker is also demonstrating the misunderstanding that the are no African Americans within Appalachia. We see this through his poem Affrilachia, “… enough to know / that being ‘colored’ and all / is generally lost / somewhere between / the dukes of hazzard / and the Beverly hillbillies / but / if you think / makin’ ‘shine from corn / is as hard as Kentucky coal / imagine being / an Affrilachian / poet (Walker, 93).” Here we see his obvious concern for the way African Americans are overlooked as not being “Appalachian” due to the medias portrayal through the Beverly hillbillies and the dukes of hazzard. Here we also see him working to change the way that people have simply overlooked the presence of African American’s within Appalachia. Walker also demonstrated within this poem, how hard it is to be an Affrilachian poet.
Lastly, within “Degrees of Elevation,” we also see some similarities that we see from Frank X Walker’s “Affrilachia,” in the sense that both authors in the short story Holler by Crystal Wilkinson. The depiction of hostility and disdain for African Americans within Appalachia is evident during the section where the incident has happened, and the protagonist is speaking with the police,
Works Cited Billings, Norman, and Ledford. Confronting Appalachian Stereotypes: Back Talk from an American Region. Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky, 1990. Beaver, Patricia.
The author was born in Washington D.C. on May 1, 1901. Later, he received a bachelor’s degree from Williams College where he studied traditional literature and explored music like Jazz and the Blues; then had gotten his masters at Harvard. The author is a professor of African American English at Harvard University. The author’s writing
“Burning Bright: The Language and Storytelling of Appalachia and the Poetry and Prose of Ron Rash.” Shepard University. 2011. The.
In the world of Appalachia, stereotypes are abundant. There are stories told of mountaineers as lazy, bewildered, backward, and yet happy and complacent people. Mountain women are seen as diligent, strong, hard willed, and overall sturdy and weathered, bearing the burden of their male counterparts. These ideas of mountain life did not come out of thin air; they are the direct product of sensational nineteenth century media including print journalism and illustrative art that has continuously mislead and wrongfully represented the people of Appalachia. These stories, written and told by outsiders, served very little purpose to Appalachian natives other than means of humiliation and degradation. They served mostly to convince readers of the need for so-called civilized people and companies to take over the land and industry of the region, in particular the need for mineral rights, railroads, and logging as the mountain folk were wasting those valuable resources necessary for the common good.
The Negro Speaks of Rivers and Mother to Son, explained the importance of the woman, light and darkness and strength in the African-American community. Hughes made a very clear and concise statement in focusing on women and the power they hold, light and darkness, and strength. Did his poems properly display the feelings of African-American’s in that time period? It is apparent that Hughes felt a sense of pride in his culture and what they had to endure. After all “Life ain’t been no crystal stair!”(Norton, Line 2, 2028)
No matter where one is from or where one finds themselves today, we carry with us in some way or another a specific heritage. Certain events and circumstances can lead to someone trying to forget their heritage or doing everything in their power to preserve that heritage. Alice Walker’s “EveryDay Use” was published in 1973, not long after the civil rights movement, and reflects the struggles of dealing with a heritage that one might not want to remember (Shmoop). Alice Walker is well known as a civil rights and women’s rights activist. Like many of her other works she uses “Everyday Use” to express her feelings on a subject; in this case African American heritage. Through “Everyday Use” it can be seen that Alice Walker has negative feelings about how many African Americans were trying to remove themselves from parts of their African American culture during the time of the short story’s publishment. This idea that Walker was opposed to this “deracinating” of African Americans coming out of the civil rights
Williams, Michael Ann. "Folklife." Ed. Richard A. Straw and H. Tyler Blethen. High Mountains Rising: Appalachia in Time and Place. Chicago: University of Illinois, 2004. 135-146. Print.
Brown conducted a form of unorthodox anthropology fieldwork among southern ebony individuals within the 1920s and afterward engendered a series of dominant essays on ebony Folkways. Brown drew on his observations to engender a composed dialect literature that honored ebony individuals of the agricultural South rather than championing the early order of ebony life being engendered in cities and also the North. Brown's wanderings within the South portrayed not simply an exploration for literary material, however but an odyssey in search of roots more consequential than what appeared to be provided by college within the North and ebony materialistic culture in Washington. Both Brown’s poetry and criticism pursue the liberty referred to as Hughes. As a result of Browns in depth work in African American folk culture, he was well prepared to present his vision to a wider audience once the chance arose.
The South is a region of the United States known for lively bluegrass and jazz music, African American literature, fine cuisine, family unity, a strong prevalence of religion and racial stereotypes. These customs, important to this area, have spurred artists to write about their experiences in the South. Black American poet and educator, Terrance Hayes, has been greatly influenced by the culture of the Southern United States. Terrance Hayes’ works reflect Southern influences and how being a member of the black community in the South has shaped his identity and his perception of the world.
The Appalachian mountaineers have been discovered and forgotten many times. Their primitive agriculture disrupted by foragers and incessant guerrilla warfare, thousands of them straggled out of the mountains in search of food and shelter. Their plight was brought to the attention of President Lincoln, who promised that after the war a way would be found to aid the poor mountain people whom the world had bypassed and forgotten for so long. The war ended, President Lincoln was assassinated, and so therefore Appalachia was forgotten. Appalachian people are considered a separate culture, made up of many unique backgrounds - Native Americans, Irish, English and Scotch, and then a third immigration of Germans and Poles - all blended together across the region. The mountains also figure into the uniqueness of Appalachia. The mountains kept Appalachia isolated from the rest of the country and from other people's involvement in their lives that they developed a distinctive culture. (arministry.org)
Waller, Altina. "Two Words in the Tennessee Mountains: Exploring the Origins of Appalachian Stereotypes." Journal of Social History 32 (1999): 963.
All in all, the treatment of the American Indian during the expansion westward was cruel and harsh. Thus, A Century of Dishonor conveys the truth about the frontier more so than the frontier thesis. Additionally, the common beliefs about the old west are founded in lies and deception. The despair that comes with knowing that people will continue to believe in these false ideas is epitomized by Terrell’s statement, “Perhaps nothing will ever penetrate the haze of puerile romance with which writers unfaithful to their profession and to themselves have surrounded the westerner who made a living in the saddle” (Terrell 182).
More often than not, Appalachia catches a bad reputation for being known as an area full of “dumb, ignorant hillbillies”, when the reality is far from that. In David Baldacci’s novel, Wish You Well, the reader is introduced to a one-of-a-kind, sweet, ginger, mountain kid named Jimmy “Diamond” Skinner. He is carefree and seemingly unafraid of anything, going so far as to cross a gorge on a log, sliding under a train that can begin to move at any minute, and has had a fair share of confrontations with a bear. While Diamond is very fun and adventurous, he has never been formally educated. This would easily make the reader believe that he fits the exact stereotype that I mentioned earlier, however, that is not the case.
Robert Hayden recovered what had been lost of the African American experience in the following poems: “Middle Passage”, Homage to the Empress of the Blues”, and “Those Winter Sundays”. In his poem “Middle Passage” Hayden talks about the suffering and the desire of restoration in African Americans through the experience they endured. Hayden uses his poems as a way to communicate his experience and escape what is happening around him the best he can. “I cannot sleep, for I am sick with fear, but writing eases fear a little” (Hayden, 1962, p. 2373), he cannot get away from what is happening around him, and he cannot ignore the pain that is so familiar, but he is able to escape to his own mind.
During this era African Americans were facing the challenges of accepting their heritage or ignoring outright to claim a different lifestyle for their day to day lives. Hughes and Cullen wrote poems that seemed to describe themselves, or African Americans, who had accepted their African Heritage and who also wanted to be a part of American heritage as well. These are some of the things they have in common, as well as what is different about them based on appearance, now I shall focus on each author individually and talk about how they are different afterwards.