A Southern Appalachian Reader

Bys: Wolfe, Thomas, Agee, James, Chase, Richard

Book Overview

This anthology of Appalachian literature is designed for high school students, containing fiction, non-fiction, poetry, drama, ballads, and examples of mountain speech and song. This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 091323950X
• ISBN13: 9780913239506
• Release Date: November 1988
• Publisher: Appalachian Consortium Press
• Length: 529 Pages
• Weight: 1.30 lbs.
• Age Range: 15 to 17 years
• Grade Range: Grades 10 to 12

Customer Reviews

A note from the co-editor, Nellie McNeil

"...finally our book looks at continuity-where are we going and what are we taking with us.We're suggesting that, despite change, we're taking the same old rugged self-reliance of Davy Crockett and Daniel Boone. We're also suggesting that, despite change, we're taking commitment to a sense of place, the creative force of memory, the presence of story in history, the abiding connections of family, the neighborly character of small towns, the moving yet private forces of religion and the existence of art in ordinary people and things."

Review by: Robert J. Higgs, Editor, Voices from the Hills

Challenging yet straightforward, this comprehensive anthology meets the reader on ground both familiar and strange. In its pages, present and past intersect in essay, story, and poem, giving the book pressing social relevance and literary charm. Included are both well-known and rising new writers of the current generation. Its themes are crucial ones for Americans of any age or locale: individualism, a sense of place, land and its influence on people, the role of the family, and continuity of traditional values. The book convincingly illustrates the thesis that the opening of the American mind should begin at home.

Review: David N. Mielke, author "Teaching Mountain Children"

"A Southern Appalachian Reader" is a bountiful feast for anyone beginning an acquaintance with the literature of Appalachia. Great breadth of regional experience is presented: early ballads and authors Murphy and Fox, to popular author Lisa Alther and German language scholar Jim Wayne Miller. Such wide representation is essential to avoid the ever-present negative stereotypes of Appalachia and its citizens. I would urge every high school in the region (as well as the nation) to incorporate this volume in its literature program.

Review by: Gail E. Haley, Author of "Jack and the Bean Tree"

This book offers disappearing delights from the speech of mountain people in this century. It is the heritage of all people of Celtic ancestry, and carries with it echoes of distant places, ancient minstrels, the romance of forgotten lovers and adventurers, whose stories have almost disappeared elsewhere.