Mountain People and Places

Appalachian Women

Bloodroot: Reflections on Place by Appalachian Women Writers by Joyce Dyer. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1998. 302 pages, illustrated.
Here Joyce Dyer gives scores of important Appalachian women writers a chance to reflect on their sense of place. The result gives the reader ample food for thought and a sense of the wide range of regional experience. Ranging from heart-warming to informative, these interviews are likely to strike responsive chords with most readers. **Click here to order**

Blacks in Appalchia

Blacks in Appalachia edited by Ed Cabbell and William J. Turner. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1985. 277 pages.
This eclectic book provides an overview of what had been written about Black Appalachians through the mid-eighties. **Click here to order**

The Cherokee

James Mooney’s History, Myths and Sacred Formulas of the Cherokee by James Mooney. Asheville: Historical Images, 1992, based upon Sacred Formulas of the Cherokee, 1891 and 1897 and Myths of the Cherokee, 1900, published by the Bureau of American Ethnography, reprinted by C. Elder, Bookseller, 1972.
These turn-of-the-century manuscripts have never been superseded in the field of Cherokee culture. James Mooney spent years with a Cherokee holy man named Swimmer, gaining his confidence and collecting and preserving his stories and formulas. **Click here to order**

Mountain Biographies

What My Heart Wants to Tell by Verna Mae Slone. Washington, D.C.: New Republic Books, 1979, reprinted by University Press of Kentucky, 1987. 143 pages.
Verna Mae Slone embodies the old fashioned virtues of traditional mountain women completely and has succeeded brilliantly in articulating a point of view shared by many but seldom saved on the printed page. Known for decades as a traditional mountain quilter and dollmakers, in the 1970s Verna Mae Slone was interviewed as part of an oral history project by students at Alice Lloyd College near her home in Knott County, Kentucky. When their book, Our Appalachia, was published with her interview and picture included, she decided she had more to say and ought to do her own book. The result was characteristically straight-forward and has warmed the hearts of readers ever since. It is both a biography of her father, "Kitteneye" Slone, and a defense of traditional mountain ways. **Click here to order**