Talking Appalachian by Amy D. Clark

Author:Amy D. Clark
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780813140971
Publisher: The University Press of Kentucky

Silence, Voice, and Identity among Appalachian College Women

Katherine Sohn

Like the contributors whose stories of language prejudice appear in part II of this volume, the nontraditional students from eastern Kentucky who took my composition classes in the early 1990s experienced discrimination on the basis of their gender and their dialect, and this figured strongly in their identities. These women were the subject of my doctoral study, for which I interviewed eight graduates of Preston College in Preston County, Kentucky (the names of both the college and the county are pseudonyms), to discover the effects of acquiring academic literacy and current literacy practices. From the eight, I chose three women for follow-up interviews and participant observation. These women taught me how coming to college helped them rise above cultural constraints to complete their degrees and take positions of responsibility in their communities. Ultimately, they disproved the adage that “whistlin’ women and crowin’ hens, always come to no good ends.”

When I wrote my dissertation—the basis for my book Whistlin’ and Crowin’ Women of Appalachia: Literacy Practices since College1—I argued that lightly editing the female participants’ speech would retain their dignity and enable readers to more easily understand what the women were saying. If I were writing the book today, I would make some changes. While watching “Hidden America: Children of the Mountains” on ABC’s 20/20 in February 2009, I was horrified to see that the producers used subtitles, as if the subjects’ eastern Kentucky dialect was a foreign language. I realized that I had, in effect, done the same by editing out dialect features of the women’s speech. How could I claim to honor their language and continue to challenge language attitudes and prejudices if I edited the very language that defines them?

Since my study in 1999, I have interviewed the children of these women to see what effect their mothers’ education has had, since one of the primary hopes the women expressed in their interviews was that their children would not, like they did, wait too long to attend college. Pharmacists, auto mechanics, construction workers, teachers, and telecommunications workers, their sons and daughters are all contributing to their communities and were terrifically proud of what their mothers did. The following statement by Victor Villanueva applies to these women: “All [academic authors] have written about . . . the need to reclaim a memory, memory of an identity in formation and constant reformation, the need to reclaim a memory of an identity as formed through the generations.”2

As I heard the stories of these Preston County women, I observed them move from silence in the academic classroom to revised identities and more confident voices in their communities. Reflecting on their stories, I began to see the parallels to my own search for voice, the need to “reclaim a memory of an identity.” Slowly I began to acknowledge that the “reasons we engage in academic endeavor are often connected . . . implicitly to our own experiences and desires . . . our own history and interests.

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