Tennessee Woman: An Infinite Variety, and: A Gathering at the Forks (review)

NEW APPALACHIAN BOOKS Opinions and Reviews Wilma Dykeman. Tennessee Woman: An Infinite Variety. Newport, Tennessee: Wakestone Books, 1993. Ill pages. $14.95. George Ella Lyon, Fim Wayne Miller, and Gurney Norman, editors. A Gathering at the Forks. Wise, Virginia: Vision Books, 1993. 445 pages. $25.00. Those of us who have waited for the reprinting ofWilma Dykeman's Tennessee Women: Past and Present are, in part, indebted to Nashville educator Carole Buey for the recent revision ofthat book. According to Bucy's introduction to Tennessee Woman: An Infinite Variety, her frustration over the lack of information available on Tennessee women led to her contacting Wilma Dykeman and, eventually, to having her own research interwoven with that of Dykeman in this expanded version of Tennessee Woman. Probably best known for her novel, The Tall Woman, Dykeman is at once scholarly and lucid (a rare combination among contemporary writers, it seems) in this non-fiction work. The enthusiasm she feels for her topic creates an atmosphere in which time is suspended, and the reader is able to stroll along with the author, meeting the diverse array of women she describes, acquiring unforgettable impressions of each individual. As the jacket illustration (designed by artist Kay Jursik) beautifully suggests, Dykeman's book includes women of African and Native American descent as well as those with European roots; she places a nameless 104-year-old mountain woman in the same gallery as internationally known Oprah Winfrey; and the "vicious and bloodthirsty" are introduced, right along with the humanitarian and well-respected. Whether she is enabling us to become acquainted with Nancy Ward, eighteenth-century Beloved Woman of the Cherokee Nation, Emma Bell Miles, unsung author of the now classic The Spirit of the Mountains, or Wilma Rudolph, Olympic celebrity and woman extraordinaire, Dykeman is a warm and hospitable hostess. The humility and vision of the author are particularly evident in the book's conclusion when we, the readers, are invited to "go and discover the Tennessee woman for [ourselves] . . . and help write her future, our future." Among those who have helped write the future, none deserves more honor 57 than Wilma Dykeman, for like the women she has so beautifully memorialized, she, too, is Tennessee woman. Readers familiar with the works of any Appalachian writers at all will speculate, merely by noting the trio of editors responsible for A Gathering at the Forks, that this book is "bound to be good"—and they won't be disappointed. Celebrating fifteen years of the Hindman Settlement School Appalachian Writers' Workshop, the anthology showcases an impressive array of writings by workshop participants—most of them from Southern Appalachia—and the afterword, "Appalachian Writing: A Regional Awakening," is the most concise and informative history of Appalachian literature I have encountered. In his insightful essay, "The Reenchantment of Appalachia," Parks Lanier observes, "AU too often, Appalachian people feel caught between two worlds, hard pressed to mediate between them. The world of the past is not dead, and the world of the future is struggling powerfully to be born." Citing the poetry of Marilou Awiakta as evidence that the people ofAppalachia are endowed with extraordinary abilities for surviving change, he says that Awiakta "seizes the opportunity to participate in the birth of a new world, seeking through her poetry to assure its safe delivery." One of the most delightful "looking-back" essays in the Hindman collection is Norma Eversole's "Chopping Corn." Recalling a day from thirty-five years ago, the author records an unbroken monologue in which her grandmother imparts years of wisdom to the young granddaughter as they hoe their way through a corn patch: how to cross a "bob-wire" fence without tearing her dress-tail, the importance of watching for snakes among huckleberry bushes, the significance of family events such as Aunt Bess's mystical vision and Aunt Laury's heroic death, and the fact that being female should not hold her back from "learning anything [she] wanted to know." The value of such wisdom is evident in Arrie Ann Bates's tribute to a young mother with AIDS, "Belinda: Our Tremendous Gift." A poignant example of one whose cultural heritage has taught her to deal courageously...