Chapter 28 Exercises: Appalachian Literature — Writing the Mountains from Within

Exercise 1: Primary Source Analysis — Voices from the Fiction

Read the following excerpts from Appalachian fiction discussed in this chapter:

Excerpt A — James Still, River of Earth (1940): "Father sat on the porch with his hands between his knees, watching the mountain. I watched him watching it, and I wondered what he was looking for. The mountain never changed. It was always there, green in summer, bare in winter, holding the sky up on its shoulder. But Father looked at it like it owed him something."

Excerpt B — Lee Smith, Fair and Tender Ladies (1988): "I have lived in these mountains all my life and I have never been anywhere else, not really, not in my heart. I went to school and I went to church and I walked to the store and I walked back. I bore children and I buried my mother and I planted my garden. But my mind — my mind has been everywhere. That is what the writing does for me. It takes me out of this hollow and sets me down in the wide world."

a) Both excerpts feature characters in relationship with the mountain landscape. How does the landscape function in each excerpt? Is it a source of comfort, constraint, meaning, or something else? How does the narrator's relationship to the land reflect their broader situation?

b) Compare the narrative voices. Still writes from the perspective of a child; Smith writes in the voice of an adult woman reflecting on her life. How does the choice of narrator shape the emotional tone and the reader's understanding of the experience being described?

c) Both excerpts address, in different ways, the experience of feeling trapped in a beautiful place. How does each writer handle the tension between the beauty of the landscape and the limitations of the life it contains? Is there a difference between loving a place and being trapped in it?

d) Write a 400-word essay on the role of landscape in Appalachian literature. Drawing on the excerpts above and the chapter's discussion of multiple writers, argue that the Appalachian landscape is not merely a setting but an active force that shapes the lives and identities of the characters who inhabit it.

Exercise 2: The Burden of Representation

The chapter argues that Appalachian writers carry a "burden of representation" — the weight of knowing that their work will be read not just as literature but as a statement about their region and its people.

a) Define "the burden of representation" in your own words. Why does a novel set in Appalachia carry this burden in ways that a novel set in Manhattan does not? What is it about Appalachian stereotypes that makes every literary depiction a potential political statement?

b) Choose two writers discussed in this chapter who respond to the burden of representation in different ways — for example, one who writes primarily for outsiders and one who writes primarily for insiders. Compare their approaches. How does the intended audience shape the content, tone, and style of their work?

c) The chapter identifies several ways that writers have responded to the burden: fighting stereotypes directly, ignoring them, subverting them, or reinforcing them. For each response, identify a writer or work from the chapter that exemplifies it. Which approach do you find most effective, and why?

d) Write a 500-word essay on whether the "burden of representation" is ultimately productive or destructive for Appalachian literature. Does the pressure to represent a region and its people push writers toward better, more honest, more urgent work? Or does it constrain them, forcing them to be ambassadors when they want to be artists?

Exercise 3: Appalachian Literature and American Canons

The chapter argues that several Appalachian literary works — particularly Harriette Arnow's The Dollmaker — have been unjustly excluded from the American literary canon because of biases related to class, gender, and region.

a) What is a literary canon? Who decides which books are included in it? What institutions (universities, publishers, review outlets, prize committees) shape the canon, and how do their biases affect which books are remembered and which are forgotten?

b) The case study on The Dollmaker argues that the novel's neglect was caused by class bias, gender bias, and regional bias. Choose one of these three factors and research it in depth. How has this bias affected which American novels are considered "great"? Can you identify other novels besides The Dollmaker that have been marginalized by the same bias?

c) Is the concept of a literary canon still relevant in the twenty-first century? With the internet, self-publishing, and the democratization of book culture, is it still possible for a small group of gatekeepers to determine which books matter? Or have the old hierarchies been replaced by new ones?

d) Write a 400-word argument for the inclusion of one Appalachian literary work (of your choice) in a standard survey of American literature. Make the case based on the work's literary quality, its historical significance, and its contribution to the national conversation about who Americans are and how they live.

Exercise 4: Black Appalachian Literature

The chapter describes the emergence of Black Appalachian literary voices — particularly Crystal Wilkinson and the Affrilachian Poets — as one of the most important developments in contemporary Appalachian culture.

a) Frank X Walker coined the term "Affrilachian" in 1991 to name the experience of being both Black and Appalachian. Why was a new word necessary? What did the existing vocabulary lack? How does the creation of a word constitute a political and cultural act?

b) Read Crystal Wilkinson's poem "Blackberries" or an excerpt from The Birds of Opulence (available in many anthologies and online). Describe the world Wilkinson creates. How does she establish her characters as both Black and Appalachian? What details of landscape, speech, food, and community connect her work to the broader Appalachian literary tradition?

c) The chapter argues that reading Wilkinson alongside Still, Arnow, and Smith "does not diminish those writers. It completes them." Explain this argument. How does the inclusion of Black Appalachian voices change the meaning and significance of the white Appalachian literary tradition?

d) Write a 500-word essay on the relationship between naming and visibility. The Affrilachian Poets created a name for an identity that had existed for centuries but had never been named. Drawing on the chapter's discussion and your own research, argue that the act of naming is a form of power — that to name something is to make it real, and that to be unnamed is to be invisible.

Exercise 5: Comparative Analysis — Two Appalachian Novels

Choose two novels discussed in this chapter (possibilities include River of Earth, The Dollmaker, The Stories of Breece D'J Pancake, Storming Heaven, Fair and Tender Ladies, Serena, Clay's Quilt, or The Birds of Opulence) and read at least the opening chapters of each.

a) Compare the narrative voices of the two novels. How does each writer create a distinctive voice? What role does mountain speech — dialect, idiom, rhythm — play in each? How do the voices differ in emotional register, level of formality, and relationship to the reader?

b) Compare how the two novels depict the Appalachian landscape. Is the landscape described in detail or taken for granted? Is it a source of beauty, danger, sustenance, or constraint? How does the landscape shape the characters' lives and decisions?

c) Compare how the two novels depict work — the physical labor that dominates the lives of Appalachian people. What kinds of work are described? How does the writer render the experience of labor? Is work depicted as meaningful, crushing, or both?

d) Write a 500-word comparative essay arguing that the two novels, despite their differences, share a common commitment to a specific Appalachian literary value. Identify that value (it might be honesty, specificity, resistance to stereotypes, or something else) and show how each novel embodies it.

Exercise 6: Then and Now — Appalachian Writing Today

Then: In 1940, James Still published River of Earth from a log cabin in Knott County, Kentucky, and was read by a small but devoted audience.

Now: Appalachian literature is produced by an increasingly diverse group of writers and reaches national and international audiences through major publishers, literary prizes, and film adaptations.

a) Research one contemporary Appalachian writer not extensively discussed in this chapter (possibilities include David Joy, Mesha Maren, Carter Sickels, Amy Greene, Robert Gipe, or another writer of your choice). Read at least one story, essay, or excerpt from their work. Describe what you read and assess how the writer's work relates to the Appalachian literary tradition described in this chapter.

b) How has the institutional landscape for Appalachian literature changed since James Still's era? Are there MFA programs, literary journals, publishing houses, or arts organizations that specifically support Appalachian writers? Research at least one such institution and describe its mission and its impact.

c) The chapter describes a growing diversity of Appalachian literary voices — including Black writers, LGBTQ+ writers, and writers working in new forms like graphic novels. Research one example of this diversification and describe how it extends or challenges the Appalachian literary tradition.

d) Write a 400-word assessment of the current state of Appalachian literature. Is the tradition thriving, declining, or transforming? What challenges do Appalachian writers face today? What opportunities exist that were not available to earlier generations?

Exercise 7: Writing Appalachia — A Creative Exercise

This exercise asks you to practice the craft of Appalachian writing.

a) Write a 300-word description of a specific Appalachian place — a hollow, a porch, a kitchen, a church, a mine entrance, a river, or any other specific location. Do not name the place as "Appalachian." Instead, render it through specific sensory details — what you see, hear, smell, taste, and touch — so that the place comes alive for the reader. Model your prose on the writers discussed in this chapter: spare, specific, and grounded.

b) Write a 200-word passage in the voice of a mountain character — a person speaking in their own language, about their own experience. Pay attention to idiom, rhythm, and the cadences of mountain speech. Do not make the character a stereotype. Make them a person.

c) Write a 300-word passage about the same place from Exercise (a), but now from the perspective of an outsider — a journalist, a tourist, a social worker, or an academic — seeing the place for the first time. How does the outsider's perspective differ from the insider's? What does the outsider see that the insider takes for granted? What does the outsider miss?

d) Reflect in 200 words on the experience of the three writing exercises. Which was easier — writing as an insider or as an outsider? What does this exercise reveal about the challenges of writing about a stereotyped place?

Exercise 8: Community History Portfolio — Literature and Storytelling in Your County

This exercise is part of the ongoing Community History Portfolio project. For your selected Appalachian county:

a) Research the storytelling traditions of your county. Were there known storytellers — people valued for their ability to tell a tale? What kinds of stories were told? Are there collections of local stories in libraries, historical societies, or university archives?

b) Has your county produced any published writers — novelists, poets, memoirists, essayists? Has your county been the setting for any notable works of Appalachian literature? If so, how is the county portrayed?

c) Has your county been the subject of outsider writing — local color fiction, journalism, documentary film? How do outsider depictions of the county compare to insider accounts? Where do the two perspectives diverge, and what does the divergence reveal?

d) Write a 600-word literary portrait of your county, connecting the local storytelling tradition to the broader patterns described in this chapter. Consider: whose stories have been told, whose have been silenced, and what stories still need to be written?