High Mountains Rising (36 page)

Despite being one of the oldest literary genres in Western civilization, drama has played a comparatively marginal role in Appalachian literary history. The best-known plays to depict the culture of the region were, in the nineteenth century, Paulding's
The Lion of the West
(1830) and, in the first half of the twentieth century, Howard Richardson's and William Berney's
The Dark of the Moon
(1945). By the 1950s, the “outdoor drama” was becoming popular in Appalachia. Produced primarily in the summertime for tourists and performed in outdoor theaters by large casts, outdoor dramas were pageants centered around a narrative (usually an interpretation of an historical story of regional and often national relevance) presented in the form of a play. Also featuring choreography and both live and prerecorded music, outdoor dramas tended to be simplistic in terms of character development and romanticized in terms of historical representation. Popular outdoor dramas in Appalachia include
Unto These Hills
in Cherokee, North Carolina (first staged in 1950, it has as its central narrative a play by Kermit Hunter reinterpreting the story of legendary Cherokee warrior Tsali and the Trail of Tears);
The Horn in the West
in Boone, North Carolina (centered around a 1952 play by Hunter retelling the life of legendary frontiersman Daniel Boone);
Wilderness Road
in Berea, Kentucky (this 1955 play, penned by Paul Green, likewise represented frontier history);
The Trail of the Lonesome Pine
in Big Stone Gap, Virginia (featuring a 1964 adaptation of John Fox Jr.'s novel by playwright Earl Hobson Smith);
The Hatfields and the McCoys
in Beckley, West Virginia (written by Billy Edd Wheeler); and
The Reach of Song
at Young Harris College in north Georgia (offering a portrayal of the life of poet Byron Herbert Reece written in 1989 by playwright Tom DeTitta).

Williams's categorization of Appalachian literary works into historical periods did not extend beyond the 1950s. In his 1977 article, Miller identified two developments in Appalachian literature after 1960: distinctly Appalachian variations of Southern “gothic” fiction, such as James Dickey's
Deliverance
(1970) and the early novels of Fred Chappell and Cormac McCarthy; and fictional works that attempted to reconcile contemporary social attitudes (especially those of that era's counterculture) with traditional Appalachian values (such as Gurney Norman's 1972 novel
Divine Right's Trip).

Expanding on Williams's and Miller's historical surveys of Appalachian literature entails acknowledging several literary trends from the last decades of the twentieth century. In the 1970s and 1980s, several authors, including West Virginians Breece D'J Pancake and Pinckney Benedict, garnered attention for their short fiction, producing short stories that were much more modernist (more minimalist and ironic and less nostalgic) than most short fiction by earlier writers from the region. Several novelists active after 1960 likewise were strongly influenced by modernist stylistic aesthetics, although
their themes often were traditionally Appalachian. For example, two other West Virginia authors, Mary Lee Settle and Denise Giardina, wrote complex novels that portrayed distinctively Appalachian social milieus. Known collectively as the Beulah Quintet, Settle's five interlinked novels traced the various historical stages—and overarching moral and philosophical significances—of British settlers becoming Appalachian residents; one of these novels
(Blood Ties
, 1978) was awarded the National Book Award. Giardina earned acclaim for a novel set in the coalfields,
Storming Heaven
(1987). A fictionalized retelling of the Battle of Blair Mountain, a historic struggle between striking pro-union coalminers and the U.S. Army in the early 1920s,
Storming Heaven
was told from multiple perspectives; the novel's central consciousness was not that of any individual human being but rather that of an entire community united in a moral struggle.

The significant socioeconomic changes in Appalachia between 1960 and 2000 influenced regional literature, with fiction, for instance, increasingly emphasizing urban and suburban life, as in the work of Jayne Anne Phillips and Lisa Alther. Also, Appalachian literature more fully reflected the region's cultural diversity. For example, several literary works written in this period brought national attention to the Native American experience in Appalachia. Previously, well-known books about Native American life in the region were either translations from the oral tradition (such as James Mooney's 1900 classic,
Myths of the Cherokee)
or ethnographies. Although not written by Native Americans, two literary works—Forrest Carter's
The Education of Little Tree
(1976) and John Ehle's
Trail of Tears
(1988)—sensitively interpreted Cherokee life and history. Carter's book, chronicling one Cherokee's boyhood, eventually became the subject of controversy: Although
The Education of Little Tree
initially was advertised as a “true story,” Carter was later revealed to have been Asa Carter, a white writer of 1960s- era race-baiting speeches for politician George Wallace. Marilou Awiakta, in her 1994 nonfiction book
Selu: Seeking the Corn Mother's Wisdom
, combined awareness of her own ancestral Cherokee cultural history with appreciation of the enduring value of Native American thought and belief.

The period 1960–2000 also brought new literary works reflective of recent African American experience in Appalachia. West Virginia native Henry Louis Gates Jr., a leading African American voice nationally, wrote
Colored People
(1994), a memoir of growing up black in Appalachia in the years immediately preceding the civil rights movement. In the 1990s, several African American writers from Appalachia, including Crystal Wilkinson and Frank X. Walker, formed the Kentucky-based Affrilachian movement to encourage literary expression of the cultural life (especially the speech and storytelling) of African Americans across the region.

Additionally, that period in Appalachian literary history fostered a body of literature concerned with the lives and perspectives of women. Some memorable novels published earlier, such as Anne Armstrong's
This Day and Time
(1930) and Arnow's
The Dollmaker
, featured strong female characters from Appalachia, yet many works published after 1960—from Wilma Dykeman's 1962 novel
The Tall Woman
to Lee Smith's 1988 novel
Fair and Tender Ladies
to Dorothy Allison's 1992 novel
Bastard Out of Carolina
—explored the theme of Appalachian women enduring enormous difficulties to ensure social and economic survival for themselves and their families. Memorable works portraying such women were also written by male authors, including James Alexander Thom's 1981 historical novel
Follow the River.
One anthology of nonfiction essays by Appalachian women writers,
Bloodroot
(edited by Joyce Dyer, 1998), was widely read in Appalachian studies circles.

The years between 1960 and 2000 saw an increase in the number of regional works that expressed the perspectives of children and childhood. Although generally bearing direct language and straightforward narrative structure, the finest works of regional children's fiction have represented Appalachian life with the same high standard of accuracy and insight as the most realistic regional fiction works intended for adult readers. Authors from Appalachia known primarily for works written expressly for children include, for the youngest readers, Cynthia Rylant (whose award-winning books include
Appalachia: The Voices of Sleeping Birds
, 1991) and Anne Shelby (author of
Homeplace
, 1995), and, for slightly older readers, Earl Hamner Jr. (specifically his 1961 novel
Spencer's Mountain)
, Catherine Marshall (author of the 1967 novel
Christy)
, and Virginia Hamilton (whose award-winning 1974 book
M. C. Higgins, the Great
portrayed African American life in the region). Several Appalachian authors usually associated with “serious” literature have also written acclaimed works for younger audiences, including James Still (whose best-loved children's book is
Jack and the Wonder Beans
, 1977), George Ella Lyon (known for such works for young readers as the 1988 novel
Borrowed Children)
, and Jim Wayne Miller (his 1989 novel
Newfound
).

Any survey of Appalachian literature—particularly when addressing nonfiction works—is obligated to distinguish between imaginative (or “creative”) nonfiction and academic (or “scholarly”) writing. Subject matter itself is not a useful criterion for evaluating the literary merit of a given nonfiction work because imaginative and academic writings concerned with the region equally focus on Appalachia and its cultural and natural history. The period 1960–2000, which is conterminous with the rise of the interdisciplinary Appalachian studies movement, brought a boom in academic writing about the region. Although some of the more influential
books in Appalachian studies—such as David Whisnant's
All That Is Native and Fine
(1983)—have been recognized for skillful use of language, academic books are first and foremost of sociological interest and therefore are not considered as literature in this chapter.

Granted that consideration, the last several decades have yielded a number of acclaimed imaginative nonfiction works focusing on the region. Annie Dillard's Pulitzer Prize-winning
Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
(1974) was an overtly subjective attempt to interpret a “sense of place” from the Virginia Appalachian landscape. More objective assessments of specific Appalachian environments can be found in such works as Wendell Berry's
The Unforeseen Wilderness
(1971), an environmental study of Kentucky's Red River Gorge, and John Fetterman's
Stinking Creek
(1967), a War on Poverty-era portrait of one Appalachian community (in Knox County, Kentucky). A nonfiction book from this period, Harry Caudill's
Night Comes to the Cumberlands
(1962), offered a polemic discussion of the social, economic, and political issues affecting the coal regions of Appalachia. Of lasting interest not so much for its arguments or for its sometimes oversimplified analyses of complex problems,
Night Comes to the Cumberlands
is admired today for its powerful, often indignant rhetoric; it is a Jeremiad castigating all participants in what Caudill considered a corrupt coal industry (self-serving coal companies, incompetent government agencies, and unenlightened natives).

Other nonfiction works from 1960–2000 pondered the meaning of Appalachian identity, primarily through first-person accounts relating individual experiences of growing up in the region. Widely read and critically acclaimed autobiographies or memoirs written by people from Appalachia in this period include Alberta Pierson Hannum's
Look Back with Love:
A
Recollection of the Blue Ridge
(1969), Andrew Nelson Lytle's A
Wake for the Living
(1975), Loretta Lynn's
Coal Miner's Daughter
(written with George Vescey, 1976),Verna Mae Slone's
What My Heart Wants to Tell
(1979), Russell Baker's
Growing Up
(1982), Garry Barker's
Notes from a Native Son
(1995), Homer H. Hickam Jr.'s
Rocket Boys
(1998), and Linda Scott DeRozier's
Creeker:
A
Woman's Journey
(1999). Inevitably, some authors wrote about other people's experiences: A widely read biography about an individual Appalachian is Richard C. Davids's
The Man Who Moved a Mountain
(1970), which tells the life story of Reverend Robert W. Childress Sr. of Patrick County, Virginia.

Fiction and nonfiction may have been the favored genres in Appalachian literature circles between 1960 and 2000 (as in previous historical periods), yet regional poets consistently composed poetry of lasting merit. Although many works of Appalachian fiction and nonfiction attracted a national readership during this period, most regional poetry, regardless of quality, found publication in local and regional magazines and journals and
inlimited-distribution books. Contemporary poets from or based in Appalachia who have maintained solid regional reputations include Lee Pennington, Jim Wayne Miller, Jeff Daniel Marion, Kathryn Stripling Byer, James B. Goode, Richard Hague, Maggie Anderson, Lynn Powell, and Ron Rash. Other poets with significant ties to Appalachia—specifically, Fred Chappell, Robert Morgan, and Charles Wright—have national reputations. Several authors originally from or living in Appalachia have won major literary awards for their poetry, including Wright, who received the Pulitzer Prize for his 1997 collection
Black Zodiac.

Given the historical reliance in Appalachia on the oral tradition and the region's rich musical heritage, the traditional ballads and lyric songs created or sung in the region constitute a body of texts worthy of mention in any assessment of Appalachian literature (both for their own verbal qualities and for their influence on other, more purely “literary” genres of writing). Previously published surveys of Appalachian literature granted some attention to regional ballads, acknowledging their straightforward yet complex narratives and their influence on such Appalachian writers as Donald Davidson, Jesse Stuart, and James Still. Recent novels by Sharyn McCrumb and Lee Smith offered narratives that expanded on plotlines or themes originally advanced in ballads, suggesting that traditional regional balladry (comprised of British “Child” ballads and “native American” ballads) continues to be a potent influence on contemporary Appalachian literary imaginations.

Distinguishable from ballads by their lack of a central narrative, lyric songs, like ballads, are expressions of the aesthetics and morality of the regional culture that produced them. Certainly, some traditional lyric songs from Appalachia wield verbal power; the aesthetic qualities they reveal include memorable yet simple phrasing and elemental themes (e.g., love, loneliness, death). Evolving out of Appalachian ballad and lyric song traditions has been the genre of the popular song lyric. Since the nineteenth century, known songwriters—many of them amateurs, some of them professionals—have written song lyrics that elaborated on regionally relevant themes (these lyrics accompanied traditional or composed melodies). Many such songs were commercially successful when published as sheet music or, after the 1920s, when incorporated into performances released on commercial recordings; accordingly, throughout the twentieth century, such songs were some of the most widely circulating examples of Appalachian verbal expression. Although few of these song lyrics, if separated from their musical bases, would endure as literary works, it should be noted that several of the more recognized songwriters from the region—from Billy Edd Wheeler and Tom T. Hall to R. B. Morris—also published books bearing their writings in more elite literary genres.