Appalachian Culture Through Song and Memoir

Description

Join us at City Lights Bookstore on Friday, August 8th at 6:30 p.m. as Jeremy Jones explores the culture and history of the Blue Ridge Mountains through song and reading. Performing old-time banjo tunes and reading excerpts from his book Bearwallow: A Personal History of a Mountain Homeland, he presents the sounds and stories of his native Appalachian mountains in a blending of personal narrative and folklore. In Bearwallow, his first book, Jones turns his attention to the complex and rich world of his Appalachian past and to understanding how this landscape shaped his own identity. Jones and his wife move into a small house above the creek where his family had settled 200 years prior, and he takes a job alongside his former teachers in the local elementary school. But living at the foot of Bearwallow Mountain after a year in Gracias,

Honduras, makes Jones realize he has lost touch with his Appalachian-crafted voice. Thus, he sets out on a search that sends him burrowing into the past—hunting buried treasure and POW camps, unearthing Civil War graves and family feuds, exploring gated communities and tourist traps, encountering changed accents and immigrant populations, tracing Walmart’s sidewalks and carved-out mountains—and pondering the future.

Throughout his book, the parallels Jones draws between seemingly disparate things—like Bearwallow Mountain and Gracias, Honduras—allows him to uncover similarities hidden just under the surface. He meshes narrative and myth, geology and genealogy, fiddle tunes and local color about the briskly changing and oft-stigmatized world of his native southern Appalachians. By doing so, he explores not only the story of his own heritage but also simplistic conceptions of Appalachia and its people. His journey back to the mystical Bearwallow Mountain reveals a peak suddenly in flux.

Jeremy Jones earned his M.F.A. in nonfiction writing from the University of Iowa. His essays have been named Notable in Best American Essays, nominated for the Pushcart Prize, and awarded the Emma Bell Miles Prize. His work appears in numerous journals and magazines, including Crab Orchard Review, Our State Magazine, and Quarterly West. He will be teaching in the English Department at Western Carolina University beginning in the fall of 2014. To reserve a copy of his book please call City Lights Bookstore at 828-586-9499.