Since the 2016 presidential election, Americans have witnessed
countless stories about Appalachia: its changing political
leanings, its opioid crisis, its increasing joblessness, and its
declining population. These stories, however, largely ignore black
Appalachian lives. Karida L. Brown's
Gone Home offers a
much-needed corrective to the current whitewashing of Appalachia.
In telling the stories of African Americans living and working in
Appalachian coal towns, Brown offers a sweeping look at race,
identity, changes in politics and policy, and black migration in
the region and beyond.
Drawn from over 150 original oral history interviews with former
and current residents of Harlan County, Kentucky, Brown shows that
as the nation experienced enormous transformation from the pre- to
the post-civil rights era, so too did black Americans. In
reconstructing the life histories of black coal miners, Brown shows
the mutable and shifting nature of collective identity, the
struggles of labor and representation, and that Appalachia is far
more diverse than you think.