Why You Should Start Reading Regional American Literature

When I moved from cardinal Appalachia to the South 14 years ago, I struggled with aggravated civilization shock. As I navigated starting assemblage and surviving successful a dorm for the archetypal time, I besides recovered myself wholly overwhelmed by however antithetic Southern civilization was from wherever I grew up. The radical astatine java shops would commencement talking to maine seemingly astatine random. I’d beryllium buying astatine Target and a implicit alien would locomotion up to maine and commencement asking maine astir my prime of shampoo. Women would look maine dormant successful the oculus arsenic they said “Bless your heart,” which I could archer was really immoderate benignant of insult.

Eventually, I decided to enactment successful South Carolina aft graduating, and portion I tried for years to set to my caller home, it wasn’t until I began speechmaking Southern lit that I yet started to genuinely recognize the region. Jesmyn Ward’s Salvage the Bones makes the Mississippi delta portion travel live connected the leafage arsenic we ticker her characters hole for hurricane Katrina. Attica Locke’s Bluebird, Bluebird took maine connected a roadworthy travel crossed Texas. And immoderate books gave maine a bird’s oculus view, similar John T. Edge’s The Potlikker Papers, which took maine on  a circuit of the South’s galore cuisines. As I read, each caller publication reinforced that the South is not a monolith. It’s a complex, divers portion that you could survey for your full beingness and ne'er genuinely recognize it. Ever since archetypal diving into Southern literature, I’ve ever recovered joyousness successful trying anyhow and speechmaking immoderate books from the portion that I tin get my hands on.

Reading books astir the portion I lived successful has helped maine consciousness much astatine home, but aft I’d work dozens and dozens of Southern books, I began to deliberation astir wherever I grew up successful Appalachia.  Appalachia and the South overlap, and some inactive support their ain unsocial cultures and histories. Silas House’s Appalachian Trilogy portrays the aforesaid Eastern Kentucky household arsenic they determination done the decades of the 20th century. Crystal Wilkinson’s The Birds of Opulence centers astir antithetic generations of Black women surviving wrong the aforesaid community. Leah Hampton’s abbreviated communicative postulation F*ckface: and Other Stories features characters from crossed confederate and cardinal Appalachia. These books, and others similar them, are a beauteous blend of Southern Appalachian culture. 

If you caput up into the Appalachian portions of Pennsylvania and Ohio, you’ll find Brian Broome’s Punch Me Up to the Gods, a memoir astir Broome’s puerility and aboriginal adulthood increasing up arsenic a cheery Black lad successful Appalachian Ohio and moving to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Ohio writer Donald Ray Polluck writes astir families successful a tiny municipality successful his abbreviated communicative postulation Knockemstiff. Deesha Philyaw’s The Secret Lives of Church Ladies examines ideas astir Black women’s sexuality and coming-of-age. Each writer writes astir Appalachia arsenic they cognize it best, giving america glimpses into antithetic parts of the region. These books incorporate universals that anyone tin link with and subordinate to, and readers who telephone these regions location tin yet spot themselves successful the pages of a book.

Growing up, I didn’t person the accidental to work books astir wherever I was from. I ever work astir distant large cities oregon wholly antithetic countries. I retrieve getting truthful excited erstwhile I conscionable saw the sanction of a adjacent municipality successful immoderate publication I was reading.  But successful the past decade, I’ve been making up for mislaid time. I’ve travel to emotion the divers scope of stories from Appalachia and the South. Now erstwhile visitors locomotion into my surviving room, they’re greeted by bookshelves covered successful Appalachian and Southern lit from each sorts of antithetic genres. What’s more, my TBR cart is overflowing with marque new-to-me stories conscionable waiting for maine to prime them up and commencement reading. 

Regions similar Appalachia and the South incorporate a wealthiness of lit conscionable waiting for caller readers to find them. That’s wherefore it’s important to enactment determination authors, indie presses, and indie bookstores, each of whom champion these kinds of books. Everyone should person the accidental to work books astir wherever they are from and research parts of the state they whitethorn ne'er beryllium capable to visit. That’s the joyousness of reading.