Curriculum- Reading List -Adams,
Sheila Kay. My Old True
Love. New York: Algonquin Books, 2004.
Davidson, Donald. Big Ballad Jamboree. Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi, 1996. House, Silas. The Coal Tattoo. Chapel Hill, N.C. : Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, 2004. Ritchie, Jean. Singing Family of the Cumberlands. Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky, 1988. Slone, Verna Mae. What My Heart Wants to Tell. Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky, 1979. Whisnant, David. All That Is Native and Fine. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1983. Selected Reading ResponsesWhat My Heart Wants to Tell – Verna Mae SloneJilllianIn the Acknoledgements at the beginning of the book, Slone dedicates this book to her father, but she also writes that she hopes 'to dispel some of the myths and misunderstandings of these people oon to be forgotten,' a people 'living in a place and time so unique and difficult that its very simplicity is too profound to be fully understood and explained.' With these statements, Slone seems to have fully explained why I have taken both this seminar and the Appalachian Music course the previous semester, to dispel the myths and misunderstandings of the mountain region. It is impressive to me that Slone has been able to take a disassociated look at her region to realize that this needs to be accomplished. One must take a step back form one's own life to realize exactly how others view it... "On Reading The Coal Tattoo"ErikNearly every chapter of this book and all of his books begin with some sort of musical setting. By this I don’t mean that the setting, the place and time, are musical in some way. The better way to put it is to say that for Silas, music is an added dimension to the setting. Place: Free Creek. Time: Dusk. Music: Patsy Cline. It’s a so often noted observation, the commentary, the literary criticism has made it way all the way back to the artist and Silas is rather aware of this pattern. It might even be that he was barreled ahead with more intensity about it after noting everyone’s response. This music also makes it rather accessible especially to younger generations who are used to having a popular soundtrack to their life. I’ll let the passage here speak for itself. It stands far out from the rest. Especially in what were aiming for in this class.
She broke the beans—five loud cracks
at each knuckle of the bean—and let them gall into the bowl
she had set on
the floor beside her chair. A breeze moved through and lifted one
corner of the newspaper she had spread across her lap to
catch the strings and the brown places. There was a rhythm to bean
breaking that she enjoyed. It was persistent enough to
make her consider tapping her foot, but at the same time it was the
music of monotony, and this sound always made her reflect
on her life and the excitement involved.
She knew that it was outer forces that made her think this way. People were always going on about how you had to have some fun in your life. How you had to have adventures. But she had never wanted to be anywhere else but Free Creek. She didn’t feel an empty place inside herself because she had barely ventures outside these hills. She did however feel funny because she didn’t not share these desires that the rest of the world seemed to have. She had never studied movie magazine and wished to be an actress, had never envied the people on television. The rest of the world was what was messed up, coveting everything they laid their eyes on. She thought about the people who drove through Crow County or flew by on the new highway without even realizing there was a whole town beyond the mountain on either side of them. If they saw this place, if they drove by Free Creek and saw her house with and El sitting on the porch while she broke beans and he drank his beer, she knew what they would think. They would consider the people on the porch and wonder how they stood living such little lives, stuck in small town where nothing ever happened. A place where the stores closed up at dusk and nobody famous ever came to speak or sing in a concert hall. A place where nobody important in their eyes had ever been born or lived. They would feel sorry for the people on the porch and the smallness of their existences and be thankful that they themselves lived in places where there were fancy restaurants and tall buildings and jobs you had to get dressed up for. But her life didn’t feel little at all to her. Al she had ever wanted was the peace of a life well lived, a good man, and the knowledge that her family was safe. Those were big things. In her mind, those people were the ones who led boring lives, always watching the parade go by, wishing they could be something they were not. So full dreams, all of them, Easter though, dreams that never would, ever come true…” 191-193 |