Letters Home (review)

AfricanAmericans in the mountains were not passive; many strove to establish communal institutions. Jennifer Smith covers the efforts of freed persons to establish an independent church and separate schools in Lumpkin County, Georgia. Joe William Trotter's essay portrays the results of the migration of African Americans into the West Virginia coalfields and the growth ofchurches, lodges andpolitical ties. Notall suchattempts were successful, however. Conrad Ostwald and Phoebe Pollitt tell of a failure to build a school and orphanage in western North Carolina. Essays such as the ones in this volume are limited to specific times, places and situations. The larger picture is missing. There were over 175,000 African Americans living in Appalachia in 1860 and over 275,000 in 1900. They made up over eight percent of the total population. More information on where they lived, how they were employed (especially after emancipation) and their family structure would have set off these essays with greater clarity. Little is said about the free black population. Inscoe acknowledges this limitation. In 1860, there were over 16,000 free African Americans in the mountains. What were their patterns of living and working? A community of free persons that included several businesses and an independent church had developed in Winchester, Virginia, by 1860. Were there others? Nevertheless, this is an excellent collection of essays. As the editor points out, these essays "...not only contribute to a greater understanding of the complexities of Appalachian society, economics, politics, and demographics, but also by extension, tell us much about the commonalities and variables that characterize southern race relations in all of its forms." (13) Pulling them together from a variety of journals and books makes them more available for reading and using in the classroom. —Robert P. Stuckert Jeff Daniel Marion. Letters Home. Sow's Ear Press, 2001. 86 pages. $18.00 In his poem "Audubon: A Vision," Robert Perm Warren writes: Tell me a story. In this century, and moment of mania, Tell me a story. With this invocation Warren reminds us of the ultimate goal of all creative writing efforts, regardless of genre. Among contemporary American poets, no one tells a better tale than East Tennessee's Jeff 83 Daniel Marion, and in his Letters Home, this master craftsman combines powerful lyricism with stories from his past to give us a beautiful paean to the Tennessee mountain people of the early 1940s. Attractively bound and packaged by Sow's Ear Press, Letters Home is a definitive salute to a critical time in the history of our nation and our region. Divided into four sections, Letters Home traces the people and things in Marion's past from his earliest memories of an uncle's experiences during World War II to his immediate family's wartime days in Detroit, and through the years of his early adulthood in and around Knoxville. Marion writes of a time well before the mountain people were referred to as "Appalachians," when the operative term for them was "Hillbillies," yet he paints his subjects in such dignified and noble colors as to give the lie to the stereotypical image of them shared by the prevailing American culture for much of the last century. In fact, Marion's identification with his culture and his love for his people echo a sentiment memorably expressed in one of Fred Chappell's titles: J Am One ofYou Forever. Particularly moving are the poems in the second section of the book, sensitive portrayals of the days Marion spent with his mother while his father worked at the Alcoa plant in Detroit. During the same time period, while working in the tiny World War II victory garden in the projects, his mother's homesick thoughts resonate through history and speak for countless numbers of displaced people: Just look at us now, loving what we once hated, far off from mountains on this flat patch of dirt they let us tend. (21) The third section of Letters Home serves as the poet's tender, admiring tribute to his father, and by extension, to the males who populated his early years and imprinted supplied grist for his imagination. In "My Father's Shoes," the boy wonders why his...