Listen Here: Women Writing in Appalachia (review)

battle deserve the focus: What was the battle's ultimate significance? What is its lasting legacy? On the other side are those who feel that Civil War history should describe in loving detail the battle strategies, troop placement, and the broad and bloody machinations of war, since these factors determine the outcome of the particular battle. Ultimately, Hafendorfer's book represents the second philosophy. Readers who believe that the intricacies of battle should be the focus will find his book both interesting and informative, for it is a book about a battle that has too long lingered and waited patiently for its scribe. —Marshall Myers Sandra Ballard and Patricia L. Hudson, eds. Listen Here: Women Writing in Appalachia. Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky, 2003. 673 pages. Cloth. $45.00. The introduction to Listen Here: Women Writing in Appalachia, begins with a quote by West Virginia poet Irene McKinney: "I'm a hillbilly, a woman, and a poet, and I understood early on thatnobodywas going to listen to anything I had to say anyway, so I might as well say what I want to" (1). The editors of Listen Here, Sandra Ballard, editor of Appalachian Journal, and Patricia Hudson, a freelance writer for Southern Living and other magazines, wanted to make sure that writers like McKinney did get listened to, so more than ten years ago they began preparations for this collection of 105 Appalachian women writers. At 673 pages, this book gives us plenty to listen to, and it is every bit worth hearing. Listen Here is a monumental work, a comprehensive gathering that goes all the way back to 1826 for an excerpt from an Anne Newport Royall travel book and is immediate enough to include the very modern musings of contemporary writers like Karen Salyers McElmurray, who offers a piece of her 2003 memoir, Mother of the Disappeared. In effect, the book covers practically the entire timeline of Appalachian writing. The editors wisely allow the book to speak for itself in many instances. There are very few entries from the 1800s, not because the editors were lazy in their research but simply because not very many women in Appalachia—or anywhere else, for that matter—were being 71 published. Listen Here not only covers the span of writing in Appalachia but also the versatile nature of its female authors. Included in the book are poems, essays, short stories, novel excerpts, autobiography, and whole texts of children's picture books. All the usual suspects are here—Emma Bell Miles, Harriette Arnow, Wilma Dykeman, Cynthia Rylant, Denise Giardina—but the book is also populated by Appalachia's lesser known female talents, which the introduction clearly states as one of the major goals of the editors. They know that many of these lesser known voices should be more widely heard, and most likely would be if not for their gender and their region. Ballard and Hudson include the very commercial (Catherine Marshall's Christy has sold more than four million copies; Barbara Kingsolver's The Poisonwood Bible was an Oprah book club selection) and those writers like Sheila Kay Adams, Angelyn De Bord, and Leatha Kendrick, who have made a name for themselves and developed a devoted following despite small publishers or limited press runs. In such a wide-ranging anthology, the key is to choose the right authors to be included, as well as the right excerpts. Ballard and Hudson succeed on both counts. Every single writer included deserves to be part of the collection. The editors have remarkable taste, unfailingly choosing perfect representation of each author, whether itbe Dana Wildsmith's and Kathryn Stripling Byer'sbestpoems or the opening chapter ofLee Smith's Saving Grace, which stands as some of her strongest writing. Ballard and Hudson succeed innotonly choosing a greatrepresentationofaparticular author's workbut also in selecting excerpts that stand easily on their own. In doing so, the editors provide the reader with that rare thing: an anthology that is big enough to serve as a doorstop, yet also serves as a true page-turner, full ofbeautiful and entertaining writing. Amongthebest aspects ofthebook are the well-writtenbiographies of the authors that precede each selection. The biographies read like...