Appalachia Project: Icy Sparks, 1998

Icy Sparks, by Gwyn Hyman Rubio

I have lots of critiques of this book, but generally I like it very much. I especially appreciated the main character's reference points in the flora and fauna of Appalachia. Her wanderings in the woodlands of northeastern Kentucky were similar to my own rovings in Vinton County, Ohio.

Icy Sparks was an Oprah Book Club book, meaning that it fits into a particular style: Excruciating suffering followed by unrealistic triumph. The endings dignify the suffering and make it meaningful. These books match Oprah's own life story of abuse and poverty, which she, through drive and talent, turned into an outstanding triumph. But Oprah doesn't credit herself with being extraordinary. Her story is not the norm. It seems like a comforting myth, that strong women will always prevail for the common good and suffering turns into benevolence. Hideous abuse survivor turns into crusader for justice. Schizophrenic woman makes inspirational bookmarks and is fulfilled. Call me a cynic, but a cloying rose-scented mist floats over this group of books. Suffering is the key. Suffering is only meaningful if it ends up doing good.

In Icy Sparks, the heroine and first-person narrator (named Icy Sparks) has Tourette's syndrome, a neurological disorder that causes physical and verbal tics. A Tourette's patient may have an urgent need to stick out her arm, distort her face, or say a curse word. The syndrome is related to obsessive-compulsive disorder; and symptoms may be worsened by stress.

Rubio's book is set in Kentucky at the between about 1955 and 1962 (Kennedy is elected as part of the plot, but the book ends before his assassination.) Rural Kentucky has more in common with the previous century than the one it's in. The area seems more prosperous than the region Johnson sought to fix up in the 1960s, but jobs were hard to come by, the coal industry was up and down, and coal dust coated the towns.

I imagine Icy's eyes to be this color.

Icy's mother died in childbirth, so she is raised by her grandparents, who she calls Matanni and Patanni, terms which are completely undefined. I have looked them up and they refer to places in Thailand and Pakistan, but have no use as grandparent names. I quickly got used to them and they sounded normal. They don't seem to indicate any non-western ancestry for Icy. She is pale and blond and has golden eyes...nothing that would indicate India or Thailand.


As she nears puberty, Icy starts to have compulsions to twitch, curse, twist, and pop out her eyes like a frog. She controls these as best she can, saving up all of the urges until she can be private and alone. Then she lets fly the pent up impulses, twirling and twitching and cussing until she has used them all up. She sees herself as having an entirely evil self to go along with her nice self and has a terror that the people she loves wouldn't love her if they knew.

Icy uses the image of the pokeweed plant to describe herself to herself. You can eat the stems and leaves of pokeweed--they are perfectly fine. But the berries and roots are deadly poison. She seems to be like the pokeweed, part poison, part good.

Rubio does a great job of portraying Icy's process of developing an understanding of what is wrong with her...she does not have a name for it and sees it as a flaw in her character rather than as a medical condition. Icy struggles to stay in touch with her good self, to make sure that both selves have expression.

In the hospital, Icy puts puzzles together, like she
tries to put herself together.

Of course, Tourette's doesn't easily stay hidden. Icy becomes more and more of an outcast and is seen as a major behavior problem at school. Her principal, in compassion, sends Icy to a mental hospital. The mental hospital is grim and gray. Icy's description of the food made me want to gag. And the other patients are a hodge-podge--cerebral palsy, OCD, brain damage of various kinds. Although the other patients are described with gruesome detail, their suffering is somewhat glossed over; they are presented sort of as other oddities that populate the world of abnormal children as opportunities for good-deed-doing. It's all Icy's story.

Icy's experiences in the hospital are weird. Although she has very little actual treatment, she gets miraculously better and is released. This seems like a complete denial of what happened in those sorts of settings. Icy's rebellions and actings-out are tolerated rather than brutally suppressed. She is on no regular medicines. Everyone is wonderful and the Nurse Ratchet character is satisfyingly banished.

More stuff happens. Icy deals with loss and with a peculiar religious conversion that seems like a lengthy non sequitur in the context of the book. The religious material is certainly interesting and vividly presented. It seems that the extremes of religious expression give Icy an outlet for her urges and compulsions. She begins singing with several different choirs, and singing helps. When she sings, the urges go away. The roots and berries are no longer poisonous; she is all good.

There is a Harry-Potteresque epilogue that cheapens this book. "See, I became a useful person who helps others in a wonderful way, so that means all my suffering was OK." Again, my inner cynic was triggered. And, in terms of literature, we already knew that with the last sentence of the last chapter. It's like the author didn't trust her readers and didn't trust her own writing. Please razor blade out the epilogue before you begin reading.

Here's the ending of the last chapter, when Icy is singing at big concert--the real best place for the book to end.

"At that moment, a handwritten sign shot up like a crown above the heads of the crowd. Dressed in red, white, and blue, Miss Emily was tilting on top of the bench like an unfurled, massive flag, propped up by the sturdy shoulders of Darrel Lute. WELCOME TO THE WORLD, the sign read. Right then and there, I believed in my future. In front of the whole of Ginseng, beneath the mountain of cloth, my heart was finally beating bright red and strong for all to see."

What doubts can you have after that?

Trying Twitching

I have been experimenting with twitching. I have some familiarity with it from have restless leg syndrome. When I'm trying to sleep, my legs need to twitch. They probably do during the day, too, but I'm moving around enough to ease the need. I take medication for it. What if twitching gives me a tiny measure of the relief that Icy felt?

So far, I feel that an occasional twitch is useful and releases tension. However, I hope that my practice with twitching doesn't turn habitual. I'm already unusual enough without adding that.

Singing

Like Icy, I am never more relaxed and at ease than when I am singing. I soothe myself with singing all the time, or with whistling. Music is in me. And, I stick with music. I find that I will listen to the same band for months, the same set of songs. I'm processing that music over and over. I don't know why. I like all types of music. I'm on a Rolling Stones jag(ger) right now...have been listening to them for more than a year and can't get...no satisfaction, of course.

I feel most spiritually right when I am singing. I feel aligned. It's not a matter of good self/bad self, like it is with Icy. But when I'm singing, other stuff drops away. It's cool.

Appalachia Project: The Land Breakers, 1964

The Land Breakers, by John Ehle

The landscape has changed around me. The world of The Land Breakers drew me in so completely that I see the landscape of another time. Land Breakers takes place in the 1780s in the Appalachians of western North Carolina and Virginia. The land is unsettled. The hero of the book, Mooney, builds the first structure in his valley, makes an ax ring out for the first time, fells oaks bigger around than the cabin he build from them.

These woods no longer exist, this old growth forest. It looks forested now, but what is growing is still new, much of it planted in the 1930s to prevent runoff. The land was cleared for settlements, but also for industry and fuel. Iron furnaces so common in Appalachian Ohio consumed acres and acres of trees every day. Glass making, too, chewed through timber, moving west until natural gas ceased the onslaught. Old growth is big trees and big animals. Old growth is bears and panthers and wolves. Old growth is not spindly trees and underbrush like what surround my town now and passes for woods. Mooney would not recognize this place. Even in the unsettled parts of Appalachia, the wood was cut and what grew back is not the woods he settled.

See, I talk about Mooney like he was a real person. I feel like I lived with him, ate corn meal and water, spent a week cutting down one tree, faced down a bear, and built a family as surely as he build hog pens and a spring house. The forest he saw is now overlaid on my tiny town and I see Walnut Street as a footpath hemmed in by huge trees. I can conjure up a pack of wolves.

The Land Breakers is about Mooney, Harrison, Lorry, and a few others who have the thirst, the wanderlust, the drive to make a place their own. Mooney came to the colonies as a child and spent years in indentured servitude. He left service with only a few possessions and the idea that he wanted something that was truly his own. He had little to lose and everything to gain by moving out into the unknown mountains. Harrison was craftier, seeing an opportunity to develop his own sphere of wealth and control. He didn't want anyone messing with his authority anymore. Another family arrived seeking to hide a brother from the law.

It's the details that build this world--details of feelings as well as setting. The reader becomes engaged in the struggle to defeat or at least make peace with this wilderness. This is a pre-Earth Day book, and assumes that land-breaking is a good and necessary thing to do--a human thing to do--a biological imperative, if you will, to find more space with less competition for resources. All animals do it, so why shouldn't humans? Mooney experiences the wilderness as awesome, frightening. He senses himself as an intruder--an unwelcome intruder. The land he selects and settles does not need him. He does not add anything to the cycles of life existing for centuries.

The book covers the first five years of this little settlement and flirts with soap opera, but stays just this side of it. The characters are rich and multi-dimensional, which is refreshing. The girl Mina is annoying for most of the book, but my annoyance was always tempered with understanding as the author fleshed in the emotional details as surely as adolescence fleshed out the girl. Mooney's wife is interesting, and their love story is sweet.

This book would make a superb movie. Drama abounds--drama drawn from the setting itself in the life/death struggle. Dangerous animals--bears, snakes, wolves, weasels--see humans both as concentrators of food and as food. For the animals, it's a bit like having a 7-11 move into the neighborhood. Readers, be ready to gasp, curse, vomit, and have your hair stand on end. What keeps this book from being lurid is that the action truly springs from the place--it's not added for shock value.

I appreciate the role of dogs in this book. A dog guarded the family and warned of danger. Dogs also acted as partners in hunting. The dogs in this book, like the dogs I've known, were loyal, loving, and would lay down their lives for their families. A dog was as essential as a plow and a rifle, as important as a good corn crop. You just can't make is without a dog. Special thanks for Candygram, Whispers, and Marigold.

The labor of the settlers is staggering--the non-stop work required for basic shelter, food, and clothing. Lorry spins, weaves, and tans all of the cloth for the family--wool, linen, linsy-woolsy, deer and bear leather. She sheers the sheep. The book goes into detail about the making of molasses from sugar cane--the only sweetener besides honey. The cane must be mashed and ground, squeezed and drained, cooked and skimmed. And before he puts up fence, Mooney must make the pegs and lashings that will hold it together, in addition to cutting and splitting the wood itself. Exhausting and exhaustive.


The early Appalachian settlers--those that survived and stayed--reflect many of the classic Appalachian traits: grit, self-sufficiency, toughness, stubbornness, independence, handiness, and unflappability (somewhat of a flat affect!). The weak and frivolous were lost to the population. Today, a key issue is that the classic Appalachian traits are not functional for today's world. Today's skill set--communication and teamwork in an often hierarchical setting--has no place for stubbornness and flat affect.

Mooney comes to see that he is not a land breaker. Indeed, he is broken by the land. He scratches out a tiny toehold for himself, but he does not win. Over time, sheer numbers of humans do win. We are living now with the results of that hollow victory.