Betty Brewer was my great-aunt, though only four days older than my mother. I never knew Betty. She died before I was born, killed by a jealous wife who caught her husband and Betty in a lover’s tryst at a boarding house rented by the day. Family spoke of BettyContinue Reading
Alvin Goins was a day laborer living in Rhea County, Tennessee, during the early and mid-years of the twentieth century. He was a Melungeon, a descendant of Portuguese ancestry. He was also illiterate. Yet, he had an extraordinary gift for numbers, able to calculate sums mentally in seconds, qualifying him,Continue Reading
When I was ten, my mother enrolled me in Margaret Howell’s School of Dancing and Etiquette. It was a phase of my male finishing school education designed to rid the savage within and transform me into a Southern gentleman, i.e., Chaucer’s “veray parfit gentil knight.” (For the record, all gentlemenContinue Reading
I went to my mother’s grave last night, which was fitting, seeing as it was Mother’s Day, but that’s not why I went. I went because she was to be dug up in the morning. All of the graves at the Waldrop Memorial Cemetery, the ones not claimed and reburiedContinue Reading
Our river is the Obed River in southeastern Appalachia. There are five of us. We’re all good friends. We work at the same restaurant and watering hole, the old Sunspot, on the old strip – otherwise known as Cumberland Avenue in Knoxville, Tennessee. We are coming of age, living inContinue Reading
INTRODUCTION In 2013, Delonda Anderson conducted an interview with David Madden, published in Pellissippi State Community College’s Imaginary Gardens Literary and Arts Review. The following is Part I of that interview, with a tweaked introduction that also accredits work he has accomplished since then. On a frosty winter day, oneContinue Reading
The air is cool as dark, billowy clouds let loose a light mist, and a gentle breeze rustles the brightly colored limbs of deciduous trees. Leaves, in all their late October glory, with their deep reds, dark purples, bright golds, and fiery oranges, appear to dance in the air.Continue Reading
**Warning: Graphic Depictions of Violence in this post Have you ever met the devil in Appalachia? Alone in unnerving wooded areas day or night? The devil wears different disguises. For some, he is a brawny satyr with goat legs, bovine horns, and an arrowed pin tail. For others, the devilContinue Reading
**Photo Source: Library of Congress The history of the Southern Appalachian region is a saga of exploitation by profiteers inimical to the aims of ordinary people to provide for their families in safe conditions. The brutal treatment of coal miners and their families is well known and thoroughly documented. However,Continue Reading
After the Coal Creek War, coalminers garnered a new respect, reclaimed their jobs and formed unions. Coal companies gained a skilled workforce and restructured the industry better than it was before convict-leasing. Families were relatively happy as normalcy and stability returned. Ten years after the Coal Creek War’s end, however,Continue Reading