Someone's Child by Aletha Adams Wells (review)

welcomed modernity. The strength of this book is that it gives us one more new glimpse into that world and its people. —James C. Klotter Aletha Adams Wells. Someone's Child. Wallingford, Ky: Unole Publishing Company, 1997. 200 pages. The autobiography, Someone's Child, like Ken Kesey's popular novel, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1962), takes the reader inside a mental hospital-a veterans' hospital, in this case—where a young Indian, like Kesey's ChiefBromden, is subjected to a daily routine ofinhumane treatment which most Americans would ascribe to a concentration camp—not a hospital. One major difference, however, distinguishes Alethea AdamsWells 's book from Kesey's novel: Someone's Child is not fictional. Born two months prematurely, in 1951-the third child ofa fourteenyear -old Cherokee girl from the mountains of Eastern Kentucky-the author was named Aleechewa ("Good Hunter"). Though she did become an excellent hunter, skilled in tracking and shooting wild game, Aleechewa's name often took an ironic twist as she herself became the hunted in a world ofhuman predators. After Alethea (her English name) was diagnosed with polio at the age of two weeks, for instance, the stepfather she knew only as "Sir" attempted to destroy the crippled infant by burying her alive. A few years later, Sir-assisted by the county sheriff— would hunt Alethea down like a wild animal, and sell her (for $500) to an older man. In a heart-rending story which alternates scenes from the Ward B lock-up unit of an Ohio mental hospital with those ofvarious Cherokee homes in which Alethea was raised, the reader is granted a rare journey through the thoughts of a contemporary Cherokee woman—a journey which may cause us to recoil in horror, or one which can give unprecedented insight into the Uves of a segment ofour society often dismissed as "drunken Indians." A superficial reading of Someone's Child, in fact, may leave an impression ofa horse-thieving, moonshme-drinking, cigar-smoking Indian woman who lives by a gun and her wits; the careful reader, however , will meet a beautiful young Cherokee/Appalachian woman whose strong spirit and steady faith in the "Maker of Breath" have enabled her to survive, against insurmountable odds: polio, seizures, dyslexia, cancer, physical beatings, chronic verbal abuse, rape, the murder ofher "babies," the death of her "Paw," the fatal plane crash of her beloved Cherokee fiancé, the terminal illness of her dearest friend-her mama. 61 Encouraged by her mother, her 'Paw,' an occasional school teacher, and such notables as author Jesse Stuart and singer Johnny Cash, Alethea learns to express her thoughts through poetry and painting; hence, though the author is economical with "flowering words," Someone's Child is fiUed with descriptive phrases, flavored with the mountain dialect of Eastern Kentucky. For example, instead of a "scraggly headed child," Alethea writes, "Her hair looks like a bunch of baby kittens had had a good sucking on it!" or, avoiding the tired cUché, "hungry as a bear," she declares, "I ate Uke an old hound that had been chasing a 'coon aU night!" Making no claims as an academic treatise, Someone's Child has touched me in a way that no other autobiography has, and for those who want to understand "Indian issues," this book is unequaled in its illuminating analysis of those issues. —Ginny Carney Derwood Dunn. An Abolitionist in the Appalachian South: Ezekiel Birdseye on Slavery, Capitalism, and Separate Statehood in East Tennessee, 1841-1846. Knoxville: University ofTennessee Press, 1997. 271 pages. $36.00. This is an intriguing book! Professor Dunn of Tennessee Wesleyan CoUege author of the very important historical study, Cades Cove, has done us another significant service by introducing us to Ezekiel Birdseye. Birdseye was a Connecticut Yankee who represented Gerrit Smith, Lewis Tappan, and other wealthy Northern abolitionists in their various Southern investments. He was a fascinating aboUtionist who more than held his own in debates with proslavery advocates in several parts of the South. In his day, Birdseye was quite weU known throughout abolitionist circles, and his revealing letters were often published in Gerrit Smith's Friend of Man, in the Christian Freeman, and in die...