Appalachia Project: Back Roads, 2000

Back Roads, by Tawni O'Dell

SPOILER ALERT: Spoilers contained herein.

Back Roads is the story of Harley, a 20-year-old boy-man coping with becoming head-of-household because of the murder of his father and his mother's conviction for it. He is nominally in charge of his three sisters. All four of the siblings struggle with the losses they have sustained and the secrets they individually carry. The book is told first person from Harley's point of view and presents his psychological process in harrowing detail. Harrowing is the word I keep using for this book. It's a great book, but harrowing.

O'Dell makes no claim that this is a book of Appalachia. Facebook friend Katrinka Walker recommended it based on its setting and perhaps on its content of extreme family disruption. The book is set in the current day (of 2000) and takes place in western Pennsylvania, where abandoned coal mines are a major feature of the landscape. When the coal was deemed too dirty and the coal-mining process too hazardous, companies just walked away from their operations. Key scenes of the book take place in an abandoned mining office. The old people in the town remember the heyday of the mines as they cough up coal dust laced phlegm and die off from black lung.

I hear all the time where I live this longing for the coal. It supported families even as it killed them off. It's a regional obsession, rather like the obsession with farming in children's literature, which I've commented on before. If only we went back to family farms, we'd all be alright again. No mention of the stink and the severed limbs and the debt and the sheer crushing labor of it!

Harrowing. I'm only on the third book of my Appalachia reading project and the bane of Appalachia has come upon the scene: incest. Although O'Dell doesn't identify this book as Appalachian, she sure hit the nail on the head. I swear that incest is no more frequent in Appalachia than it is in the general population (and any incident is tragic). I think in Appalachia it is both easier and harder to hide--easier because of isolation but harder because everybody knows everybody's business. We all know who the "baby daddy" is. Maybe Appalachians are just more frank about it. Life is often pretty crappy for everybody. 

Anyway, unraveling the truth about his father's murder leads Harley to unraveling the thread of incest that inhabits his family and grieves him to his breakdown. As the story gets grimmer for Harley, it gets grimmer for the reader. I felt at times like I could not get my breath. I put the book down suddenly and walked around the house. A couple of times Harley vomits before he sobs, and I felt that. The worst thing for me was the heaviness of grief that families ever suffer in this way.

Books like A Boy Named It I think sensationalize the experiences of abused children and teenagers. They get off on it, to a degree. It's not a genre I care for. In Back Roads, O'Dell puts you right into Harley's shoes and into his head, into his confusion and delusion and fear. It is one of the most real portrayals of psychic pain I have ever read. I long to reach out and take away the suffering...but I can't. People just have to work their own way out of it. Offering material help is about the only way to demonstrate caring. One woman in the book brings food. That means something. Harley's court-ordered therapist offers patience and helps cut through red tape. At one point, she offers a safe place to sleep. That means something.

There is sex in this book, and not just incest. Harley is just experiencing his sexual awakening and thinks and talks about sex a lot. There are scenes of masturbation and sexual violence. There are scenes of incest. A part of me is truly sorry I had to read those scenes, but for another part of me, this book allowed me to process this experience vicariously in a way that I hadn't before.

And, as with all behavior, the incest behavior makes sense in the context within which it occurs. That doesn't make it right, but you can see how it happens. Here's an exchange between Harley and his therapist Betty. In her responses, she describes the various paths taken by Harley and his siblings. Harley has cut his hands.

          "Okay, there's something I want to talk about," I said to get her mind off my hands.
          She gave me a look of surprise like she had discovered a bud on a plant she expected to die. "Go on," she said.
          "How can a kid like someone who beats them up? You know. How can they like hanging out with them?"
          "Well," she began... "every child reacts to abuse differently. Some become withdrawn. Some openly hostile. Some self-destructive. But some embrace the abuse. They thrive on it. It's what they get from their abusive parent instead of love and they come to need it."
          "So you're saying a kid can actually want to get hit?"
          "In a sense."
          "Can they think that it's Okay? Morally okay?"
          "Did you think it was okay for your father to hit you?"
          "I didn't think it was okay," I said bluntly, "but I thought it was normal."

That's when I start crying. Nobody should endure it. But really nobody should think it's normal.

Blighted hope turned into mindless violence. Mindless violence turns into blighted hope. The cycle goes round and round. Maybe the murder in this book was the murderer's way of stopping the cycle, making something different happen. I wish for every child to have better choices than that.


Catcher in the Rye
Back Roads made me think about the classic adolescent novel Catcher in the Rye. Both Holden and Harley are on lonely journeys through their home turf, reassessing, realizing, recognizing. Harley lacks Holden's sardonicism, but his self-mockery is just as brutal. Both boys end up in mental institutions. In both books, the reader is engaged by the hero and then taken along through his disintegration.

When I read Catcher in the Rye as a teenager, it was so cool. Holden's self-mockery was so cool. His cursing was so cool. His self-destruction was cool. When I read the book as an adult, I felt mostly that Holden was sad. As sad as Harley is. Just sad.

And please don't tell me that boys like Holden and Harley will come out of their mental illness, that it will make them more valuable adults. I deal with Holdens and Harleys all the time. They are damaged and they most often stay damaged. The magic constituents of resilience elude us and them. If you know the recipe, please post it. Our kids need it and those of us who work with them need it.

Appalachia Project: A Parchment of Leaves, 2002

A Parchment of Leaves, by Silas House, 2002

"Then I noticed the new leaves on the redbud tree. The purple buds were being pushed away to make way for the leaves. I walked out to the tree and put my finger to a leaf, smooth like it was coated with wax. I could feel its veins, wet and round. I had always found comfort in the leaves, in their silence. They were like a parchment that holds the words of wisdom. Simply holding them in my hand gave me some of the peace that a tree possesses. To be like that--to just be--that's the most noble thing of all." (page 218)


The redbud tree is a key symbol in A Parchment of Leaves, by Silas House. The book tells the story of Vine, a Cherokee, as she negotiates divergent worlds and worldviews. Her family had settled in Kentucky after eluding the Trail of Tears (during which Cherokee people were removed from North Carolina to the reservations in the west), so she was always a displaced person of a kind. Her marriage to the white man Saul was equally a displacement, into yet another set of values and aesthetics. Vine experiences yet another disruption when her birth family is forcibly removed from their home when a white person purchases the land they lived on for generations. The family returns to North Carolina, where a Cherokee settlement has survived, but Vine is left on her own to hold onto her sense of identity as a woman, wife, mother, Cherokee, friend, and child of god.

Vine's father tried to be as "normal" (non-Cherokee) as possible in raising Vine. After the return to North Carolina, we learn that he has restored himself to his native identity. I was hoping for a depiction of this, and for Vine to take part in it, but the author wisely stopped the story when he should. I want a next book that tells this story.

Place and Time

The book is set in the mountains of eastern Kentucky and the land is beautifully described. Vine cannot see herself as separate from the land, the streams, the soil, the rock. She grew up among and in them. The book takes place between about 1913 and 1920 and encompasses World War I. The war plays a role in the plot, as Vine's husband must live away from home to work in a job that keeps him from going overseas.


Like Christy, A Parchment of Leaves depicts a spiritual journey. But Vine's god is not up in heaven or in a book. Vine's god is in the wind and in the trees and all of the other living things. Vine's god is in the yearning she has to comfort her children, make love with her husband. The paragraph I quoted at the beginning of this post, in addition to explicating the title of the book, is one of the clearest statements of Vine's relationship to the most sacred--the earth and the life upon it. She brings the redbud tree from her birth home when she gets married and its fragility, peril, and growth and beauty parallel her own. The tree recurs as a source of strength for Vine. (And makes me want to plant one in my yard next fall.)

Please see below for a poem I wrote called "Strong Like a Tree," that expresses a sentiment similar to the one stated by Vine at the beginning of this post.

Parchment starts and stays slow until about two-thirds of the way through. It's almost like the author doesn't have enough confidence in our understanding of Vine and so he goes out of his way to establish her goodness and credibility. Several times I felt like the other shoe was going to drop, my heart beat faster as I turned the page, and then nothing big happened. Honestly, if I hadn't committed to reading the book for this project, I don't know if I would have stuck with it. Now, I'm so glad I did. I guess the author's strategy worked, because I feel absolutely committed to Vine now and shed tears for her and felt pain for her.

Matriarchy

The book starts out as a story of a courtship and marriage but evolves into the story of a group of women. These are Saul's mother, Esme; Saul's brother's wife, Aidia; and the divorced (gasp!) midwife, Serena; as well as Vine. As is still common in Appalachia, good men go away to work wherever they can find a job and bad men drink too much, get in trouble, and wander off. This leaves a family group of women, a matriarchy. Esme is the matriarch. Vine is sort of matriarch-in-training. Each woman has one child.

The story of the friendship and mothership that evolves among these women is beautiful. They support each other through so much. And over and over again, they put aside opinions and judgments to reach out to each other. The children are part of their mothers, always referenced, always on the hip, under the kitchen table, wrapped in a quilt. It was striking and yet subtle, as it is in real life, that once a child is there, it is always there, a constant. The relationship of the women to each other and to their children, in addition to a spouse, makes them rich.

I did think that the author left the women an inordinate amount of time for pursuit of their own interests, for roaming around, and resting. A huge unspoken absence was laundry. When you have a family and have to carry and heat water, you work on laundry all the time. Even "modern" women with kids do wash almost every day. Cooking also seemed to be a snap. These women would have been bone tired most of the time, although their informal cooperative did allow for shared labor. There was a golden glow where housework and farm work was concerned.

Striking Images

• Vine returns to the village of her birth to find all of the houses destroyed. She locates her family's homesite by the orientation of the trees and finds the slab of rock that was the front stoop. She sits there remembering until she is run off by the owner of the mountain, who thinks a piece of paper lets you possess something.
• Vine setting out on a horse to cross the mountains to find her people in North Carolina, carrying with her the lock of hair of her great-grandmother who first left North Carolina to live in Kentucky.
• Marvelous depiction of a pentacostal church service, where Vine is amused and terrified. She was raised as a Quaker, very quietly worshipful. The singing, speaking in tongues, flailing on the floor, and general chaos were outside of her realm of experience and unlike anything she had ever considered to be worshipful.
• The combing of hair, Vine's by her mother; daughter Birdie's by Vine.
• The washing of the bodies of the dead--a woman's duty. All four women perform this task.

Cherokee People

Author Silas House, who is part
Cherokee

When I decided to read novels of Appalachia, I did not think about native Americans. One of the reasons I chose to read this book second was that I was curious about the role the Cherokee played in the region. They are one of the few native groups that still reside in the land of their ancestors, even if they had to reclaim it after the Trail of Tears. In Ohio, the native Americans were moved out before large-scale settlement occurred; they have not been part of my personal experience of Appalachia. Because of earlier studies, I at least am aware that a strange void existed where there should have been people. We whites were able to envision the land in our own way, impose our values without interference from people who had actually lived there and knew the place.


Strong Like a Tree, by Joy Dickerson

I want to be strong like a tree

With a sturdy wooden trunk,

A crown of dancing green.

I want to feel sap rise,

Hear leaves shake,

Grow back broken branches.

I want to sway in the wind,

Capture the light of the sun,

Taste rain.

I want to be strong like a tree,

Roots making love to the soil,

Holding fast,

Bounty of earth

In my grasp.

I want to be strong like a tree,

To know in my heartwood

That spring will come

And, with it, bring

A warm time.

Conclusion

A Parchment of Leaves is excellent, as a depiction of Appalachia, but more so as a story of one woman's struggle to hold onto meaning and love. If you've read this book, I'd love to hear from you about your response to it.

Appalachia Project: What Is Appalachia?

For the purposes of my reading project, I am using the political definition of Appalachia as formulated by the Appalachian Regional Commission, the ARC (www.arc.gov) (see below). The county I live in, Vinton County, Ohio, is in red, distressed. The classications are based on economy, population, education levels, employment opportunities, and other factors.

I am not an expert on Appalachia. This blog post presents my own private conceptualization of the region.




Geologically, the Appalachian mountain ranges stretch in a broad curve from eastern Arkansas through western New York and into eastern Canada. And, if you take plate tectionics into account, they extend into northern Ireland and Scotland. You can see from the map to the right how North America and Eurasia were neighbors earlier in Earth history. The tectonic idea is cool when you realize how many people from those areas moved so far only to settle in the same mountains. Thanks to author Sharyn McCrumb for introducing me to this idea.



A cabin at Niches, McArthur, Ohio,
 where I reconnected to Appalachia.

My personal definition of Appalachia has evolved to include emotional, genetic, and economic factors, in addition to geology. I was the one in my family who was called back, called to return. I began by camping in this region and ended up by moving in permanently. It just felt like home. My ancestors were fully established in southeast Ohio by about 1840--and I mean on both sides of my great-grandparents' families. Their gravestones are gradually disintegrating within about 40 miles of my house.


THIS land is my land. Can ya' hear me?

To me, Appalachia is poor, slow to embrace change, suspicious of authority (in the schools and government), and slow to trust outsiders. It is also beautiful, resourceful, generous, funny, and rich in family and history. People feel tied to the land in a different way than in more urbanized areas. I feel tied to the land in a way I never imagined. When I sing "This Land Is My Land," I really mean this land, right here, right under my feet. "This land" is not an abstraction to me anymore. Some things about Appalachia drive me crazy. Some things make me cry. Some things fill me with gladness and Joy (myself).

Tourists don't usually see
the slum side of Jamaica.

Conceptual Models
Third world model. I often view Appalachia, and particularly the place where I live, as a third world country. We are largely dependent on extractive industries (timber, coal, natural gas) that we sell wholesale. Our raw materials are made into products and sold retail and the profits do not return proportionately to our region. Further, people keep trying to tell us that tourism is the salvation of our economy. But tourism is low-paying for the boots on the ground. Again, the real money often leaves the community. And, it is still other-centered, not a development of us for us. Like many third world countries, there might be a prosperous looking tourist "strip" masking neighborhoods of great poverty.

Matriarchal model. The key unit of community in Appalachia is the extended family, often overseen by a matriarch and supported by female breadwinners (at a lower rate of pay than male breadwinners). Men come and go out of this system, sometimes providing only sperm. People socialize within the family and do not build relationships outside it. Part of this stems from historic isolation of families (see density model below). An interesting part of a federal jobs program I have been working with is that the workers have been forming non-family community relationships. I think the results from this may be more revolutionary than the income generated by the jobs. The matriarchy is a key strength of Appalachia, but it can also deaden opportunity and stifle new ideas.

Poverty model. The characteristics often listed for Appalachia continguate with poverty characteristics. The problems of Appalachia are the problems of poverty, but spread out, diluted over many hundreds of square miles. We are hard to reach. The health and education issues are the same. Teen pregnancy, alcohol and drug abuse, and epidemic tobacco use are prevalent. That's why I'm an anti-poverty crusader as well as an Appalachia booster.

Density model. As mentioned above, we are spread thin. Vinton County, Ohio, is the most sparsely populated county in the state, in terms of people per square mile. This makes service delivery and transportation to services difficult and expensive. It also allows for privacy in a gruesome sense--no close neighbors to look out for methamphetamine labs, abused or hungry children or spouses, living standards. No gossip, in other words, which is amusing because in town (the tiny town of McArthur, population about 1,000) there are NO secrets. Everybody knows everything. I sometimes try to imagine what would happen if my county were simply closed. Move out all the people. Let it all go fallow. It's so empty anyway. It's just an idea I toy with. And, it demonstrates the parallel between the current treatment of Appalachian people and the historic treatment of native Americans. Move them off their land and disappear them into society as a whole. Get hands on land.

From ARC website:
ARC's mission is to be a strategic partner and advocate for sustainable community and economic development in Appalachia.
The Appalachian Regional Commission (ARC) is a regional economic development agency that represents a partnership of federal, state, and local government. Established by an act of Congress in 1965, ARC is composed of the governors of the 13 Appalachian states and a federal co-chair, who is appointed by the president. Local participation is provided through multi-county local development districts.
ARC funds projects that address the four goals identified in the Commission's strategic plan:

1. Increase job opportunities and per capita income in Appalachia to reach parity with the nation.
2. Strengthen the capacity of the people of Appalachia to compete in the global economy.
3. Develop and improve Appalachia's infrastructure to make the Region economically competitive.
4. Build the Appalachian Development Highway System to reduce Appalachia's isolation.

The Appalachian Region, as defined in ARC's authorizing legislation, is a 205,000-square-mile region that follows the spine of the Appalachian Mountains from southern New York to northern Mississippi. It includes all of West Virginia and parts of 12 other states: Alabama, Georgia, Kentucky, Maryland, Mississippi, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia. Forty-two percent of the Region's population is rural, compared with 20 percent of the national population.

The Region's economy, once highly dependent on mining, forestry, agriculture, chemical industries, and heavy industry, has become more diversified in recent times, and now includes a variety of manufacturing and service industries. In 1965, one in three Appalachians lived in poverty. Over the 2007–2011 period, the Region's poverty rate was 16.1 percent. The number of Appalachian counties considered economically distressed was 223 in 1965; in fiscal year 2014 that number is 93.

These gains have transformed the Region from one of widespread poverty to one of economic contrasts: some communities have successfully diversified their economies, while others still require basic infrastructure such as roads and water and sewer systems. The contrasts are not surprising in light of the Region's size and diversity. The Region includes 420 counties in 13 states. It extends more than 1,000 miles, from southern New York to northeastern Mississippi, and is home to more than 25 million people.