Not Real Good at Modern Life: Appalachian Pentecostals in the Works of Lee Smith

Abstract

In his 1996 essay Writing on the Cusp: Double Alterity and Minority Discourse in Richard Cunningham urges Appalachian writers start writing about, and therefore defining, themselves: we Appalachian writers are en(cou)raged fill in the blanks ourselves ... displace the categories of domination in both directions and thereby push open vacuum but creative space (46). The directions Cunningham refers are the North and the South; while the North uses the stereotypes of Appalachia characterize all of the Southern United States, the South displaces those caricatures solely on the Appalachian themselves, making them akin Other's Other (42). Elsewhere, Cunningham, like many Appalachian scholars, has noted that Appalachian are frequently portrayed never really moving beyond some 'classic' period (Appalachianism 127). Appalachian are Others who are not regarded as adults but as children ... as legitimate offshoots but as arrested earlier forms--not as rejected brothers but contemporary ancestors (129). Appalachian literature written by Appalachians, according Cunningham, would resist the definitions and stereotypes imposed on Appalachia by both the North and the South. Cunningham clear that what he calling for has already begun at the time Writing on the Cusp was published in 1996. As an example, he points Lee Smith's Oral History (1983). It no surprise that Cunningham chooses novel by Smith, who was born and raised in Grundy, Virginia. She perhaps the best-known Appalachian writer outside of Appalachia, and one of the most championed authors inside Appalachia. Oral History particularly important novel for Smith's career, and for the way readers imagine Appalachia. The novel was Book-of-the-Month featured selection, giving her national exposure she had previously enjoyed. But it more than simply the popularity of the novel, and its author, which led Cunningham select it as his primary example of Appalachian writers filling the blank. Citing an unnamed native Appalachian reviewer, Cunningham argues that Oral History a pastiche of every kind of stereotypical writing about Appalachia in the past hundred years (47). Drawing attention the unreliability of the narrators, and by extension, the stereotypical writing from which the narrative voices are drawn, points what left unsaid. According Cunningham, readers begin hear the whispers of the authentic voice underneath, voice present by erasure--a blankness made articulate (48). A crucial part of this narrative strategy the character of Richard Burlage. Unlike most of the characters in Oral History, Richard does grow up in Appalachia. He an upper-class man from the city of Richmond, come Black Rock as school teacher in the early twentieth century. Cunningham equates Richard's journals those of anthropologists and journalists who condescendingly write about Appalachia as local colour. Cunningham argues that by making Richard's voice just as unreliable as the residents of Hoot Holler, if more so, Smith resists dominant narratives about Appalachia. Most critics of the novel agree with Cunningham's assessment. For example, Suzanne Jones suggests that Smith uses Richard and Jennifer, another outsider character, to examine the causes and consequences of typical twentieth-century perceptions of Appalachia ... revealing the naivete and the condescension that often characterize the outsider's perception of mountain people (102). Likewise, Paula Gallant Eckard argues that while Richard is product of powerful Western influences and Latinate education, he kind of Other, true outsider in the mountain community (Prismatic Past 126). This the dominant interpretation of Richard's role in the novel: as stand-in for outsiders who perpetuate the condescending narrative of Appalachian as part of contemporary past. …