Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, July 6, 1993 TAG: 9307030056
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-3 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: ROBERT FREIS STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: RADFORD LENGTH: Long
The winds of change are blowing briskly throughout Appalachia, giving a sense of urgency to writers who harvest the region's rich cultural heritage.
There's "a feeling as if we're on the edge of losing something precious," said Jeff Daniel Marion.
Marion and others see Appalachia's traditional bonds to the land and to family unraveling as the region becomes more like the rest of America: urbanized and mass-cultured.
These writers are working to "put up" Appalachian culture much as country families can damson preserves and okra.
Several authors, including Marion, moseyed through Radford recently to participate in the Highland Summer Conference, a writer's workshop sponsored by Radford University's Appalachian Studies Program.
Their concerns about saving Appalachian culture are more forward-looking than romantic or nostalgic.
"It's a sifting process - what we have to keep, what we have to lose," said George Ella Lyon.
"The history and the spirit of a place are in its voices. To withhold them from the next generation is to cut one of the threads of ongoing life."
The region, said Marion, has "a folk wisdom that far outranks educated wisdom, something a lot of people are hungry for."
"It says you don't have to have everything to be happy. You don't have to be part of the consumer culture."
"Appalachian people haven't been as ready to swallow what Madison Avenue tells us. But I'm afraid we're about to lose that kind of savvy."
"Literally a flood" of writers and artists are focusing on Appalachia, Marion said.
They're fueled by the unique material of Appalachia, which is much like a coal seam: a thick, rich layer of old living things waiting to release its stored energy.
"It's about the necessity of and struggle with family," said Lyon, a native of Harlan County, Ky., who writes poems, novels and plays.
She describes Appalachian literature as "a combination of the mountain love of story telling and the Southern love of good talk."
Likewise, author, actor and East Tennessee resident Jo Carson likens Appalachian to Southern literature, saying both have a sense of mortality and loss.
Carson, Marion and Lyon each gave readings at Radford University during the conference, reciting poems and short stories that emphasized commonplace matters: roadside diners, crows, swimming holes, lightning, egg baskets, country churches.
Their topics are more personal and authentic than stereotypical.
It might be easier to sell books or poems that confirm popular - and generally negative - images of the region, but Carson, Marion and Lyon say that would be irresponsible.
"Anyone who writes about Appalachia is faced with layers and layers of stereotypes," said Marion, a ruddy gent with a white beard who writes poetry and edits a literary journal in Tennessee.
"If you write about the region, you verge on them all the time," Carson said. "Stereotypes exist because there's some truth to them, but they've been applied too broadly."
"Literary strip mining," is Marion's term for the collar of backwoods ignorance hung on Appalachia by the popular local-color writers of the late 19th century.
"We have been tagged as being deprived. We've lacked money for the kind of educational and social programs that other parts of the country have. But to mistake that for deprivation of character is a great harm," he said.
Part of the motivation of modern Appalachian writers is to correct those negative images, Lyon said. "Insiders want to speak for themselves."
"This generation of writers has said, `It's a lie,' " said Marion.
Still, anyone who honestly wants to define the region has to examine both sides of indigenous issues.
"Having a relationship to a place and the land is not all positive," Lyon said. "It can be a quarrel, with a place's limitations as well as its richness."
"It's not just a pretty picture," Marion said.
Carson, a lean woman who speaks with a raspy burr, said the insider-outsider view of Appalachia could best be illustrated by a story.
Her grandmother sewed beautiful quilts by hand. Instead of the popular method of stitching together pieces of fabric, she fashioned her quilts from solid pieces of whole cloth.
Why, Carson asked her. "She told me that her quilts showed she had the money to buy enough cloth for a solid one. Quilts made out of fabric pieces were a sign that you were poor."
Carson said she doubts her mother's quilts would be as valuable or as easily sold to tourists, who consider piecemeal quilts as characteristically Appalachian.
Possibly only native Appalachians or long-time residents of the region can fully appreciate what the new generation of authors is saying.
But that's OK, Lyon said. "We need to keep in touch with each other, to share the same concerns."
And share a sense of pride in being from the mountains, too.
"I love this place," said Carson. "I'm crazy about it."
by CNB