New Appalachian Books: Write-Ups

NEW APPALACHIAN BOOKS Write-Ups George Brosi Fred Chappell. Backsass: Poems. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2004. 54 pages. $24.95 in cloth. $16.95 in trade paperback. What a shame that such a common pastime has come to be called not "backsass" but "bitching." In the first place the new term makes no attempt to fathom the crucial distinction between "sass" and "backsass." Furthermore, it has terrible connotations of gender exclusivity and puts the onus on the speaker, not those who often deserve the backsass appropriately given to them. Ah, such is the downward spiral of civilization! But, hark, brighten up, friends and foes; what's that I hear? The sound of hooves—indeed our knight in shining Armor-All has returned to right the world and rejuvenate that more endearing term. Hat's off to Fred! Hooray. And thanks, Fred, for publishing one of these backsass treasures first in Appalachian Heritage and for crediting us, when you deserve all the credit! "In learning, scope, and grace, Chappell is one of the truly rare participants in the great conversation what is the Western literary tradition."—Henry Taylor. "With savage wit and arresting candor, Backsass kids us toward becoming wiser, franker, truer to our better natures. Rarely are moral lessons so hilarious."—X. J. Kennedy. This volume brings to an even dozen the poetry books by Fred Chappell to go with his two story collections and eight novels and even a Fred Chappell Reader which combines genres. A native of Canton, North Carolina, he has taught at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro since 1964. C. A. Curry. The Williams: A Historical View and Other Pocahontas Memories. Parsons, WV: McClain Publishing Company, 2003. 157 pages with photos. Trade paperback. $12.00. The Williams referred to here is the Williams River, one of eight rivers that tumble out of the scenic rural mountains of Pocahontas County, West Virginia. This memoir concentrates on fishing and tramping around in the woods enjoying the creatures found there. A native who returned after fifty years in the outside world is the author. 84 Victor Depta. A West Virginia Trilogy: Novels. Ashland, KY: Blair Mountain Press, 2004. 475 pages. $15.00. This book consists of three novels: The Gate of Paradise, Idol and Sanctuary, and Feasting with Strife. It is for you if you want your novels to have plenty of sex, lots of cussing, gratuitous violence, deep themes and artistic rendering. Depta, a native of Buffalo Creek in the West Virginia coalfields, has recently retired from an academic career mostly at the University of Tennessee at Martin. William M. Drennen, Jr., & Kojo (William T.) Jones, Jr. Red, White, Black and Blue: A Dual Memoir of Race and Class in Appalachia. Athens: Ohio University Press, 2004. 220 pages with an index and bibliography. $44.95 in cloth and $17.95 in trade paperback. What a great idea, and how well it is pulled off. This book consists of five pairs of essays written in turn by a white upper-middle class man and a black man who were both born in 1942 and both grew up in the South Hills section of Charleston, West Virginia. Editor Dolores M. Johnson, herself a black female, has done a masterful job of combining these two stories of living through segregation and desegregation. The result is a good read and lots of grist for reflection. 85 Elizabeth S.D. Engelhardt. The Tangled Roots of Feminism, Environmentalism, and Appalachian Literature. Athens: Ohio University Press, 2003. 207 pages with an index, bibliography, notes and photos. $49.95 in cloth and $24.95 in trade paperback. This is one of the most important and impressive books ever published about Appalachian literature. Also it is an outstanding contribution to the understanding of American feminist and environmental writing at the turn of the twentieth century. In particular it illuminates the lives and careers of three East Tennessee writers, Emma Bell Miles, Grace MacGowan Cooke, and Mary Noalles Murfree, and of Effie Waller Smith, a Black woman from Pike County, Kentucky. In addition, it puts their work in the context of the kind of writing done by those less sensitive to environmental and gender issues...