Appalachian Americans: Issues and Concerns for Counseling and Psychotherapy, an edited book, by Drs. Daya Singh Sandhu, Jeffrey Parsons, and Quentin Hunter, has recently made debut in the fields of multicultural and cross-cultural scholarship and practice as sui generis, a unique book of its kind in many ways. This is perhaps one of the few books that brings counseling needs and mental health problems of the Appalachian people at the forefront for the first time. Generally, Appalachian Americans have been neglected, overlooked, or just forgotten in the past.Since the Civil Rights Act of 1964, when culturally different, racially diverse, and people of color started getting attention as an integral part of the American society, multiculturalism became one of the major research interests of social scientists. As a result, most of the multicultural scholarship focused on the cultural identity, cultural worldviews, cultural values of five major racial groups which included, European Americans, African Americans, Latina/Latino Americans, Asian Americans, and Native Americans.Appalachian Americans: Issues and Concerns for Counseling and Psychotherapy is very different, unique, and distinct from most of the previous multicultural publications. This book is not based on the racial or cultural identity of the Appalachian people, it is distinctly based on the issues relating to social marginalization, economic and social injustices, and inequities. It focuses much of its attention on the impact of the oppression and social marginalization on Appalachian people's lives.In its very first and rare attempt, this powerful book explores and discusses the effects of geography on the personality and special rules for living on the Appalachian Americans. Appalachian trails, also called trails of tears, have been sadly neglected by the multicultural scholarship and institutions of higher learning. While people in the other parts of the country enjoy beautiful sceneries of mountains and their ranges, but people from Appalachia living on the same mountains call their challenges of life as mountains of problems.The contributors of this book are commended for opening new vistas and visions for the Appalachian people to tread proudly and fearlessly on many unbeaten paths of their lives without worrying about becoming prisoners of mountains.More than ethnic, cultural, and racial conflicts, Appalachian people face more economical and environmental racism and discriminations mostly caused by the big corporations who are hungry for coal from the Appalachia. Many authors have discussed issues relating to social, psychological, and environmental needs of the Appalachian people and offered strategies of social justice and advocacy to deal with poverty, injustices, and social marginalization that is so prevalent in the Appalachian Land.The aim of this textbook is to address the mental health problems and counseling needs of the Appalachian people and it is indispensable for mental health professionals, professional counselors, psychologists, social workers, psychiatrists, and all other people interested in the physical, emotional, and spiritual well-being of the Appalachian people. I hope it will adorn your home library soon.Daya Singh SandhuAugust 29, 2019

In Hillbilly elegy, J.D. Vance described how his family moved from poverty to an upwardly mobile clan while navigating the collective demons of the past. The book has come to define Appalachia for much of the nation. This collection of essays is a retort, at turns rigorous, critical, angry, and hopeful, to the long shadow cast over the region and its imagining. But it also moves beyond Vance's book to allow Appalachians to tell their own diverse and complex stories of a place that is at once culturally rich and economically distressed, unique and typically American. -- adapted from back cover

"Readers craving a witchy story full of found family, lush nature, and small-town secrets will find it utterly enchanting.” —Hester Fox, author of The Witch of Willow Hall Step into a world of hope, fate, and folk magic in this bewitching debut when a young woman travels to a sleepy southern town in the Appalachian Mountains to honor her best friend. Mel Smith’s life is shattered after the sudden death of her best friend, Sarah Ross. In an effort to fulfill a final promise to Sarah and find herself again, Mel travels to an idyllic small town nestled in the Appalachian Mountains. But Morgan’s Gap is more than she ever expected. There are secrets that call to Mel, from a salvaged remedy book filled with the magic of simple mountain traditions to the connection she feels to the Ross homestead and the wilderness around it. With every taste of sweet honey and tart blackberries, the wildwood twines further into Mel’s broken heart. But a threat lingers in the woods—one that may have something to do with Sarah’s untimely death and has now set its sights on Mel. The wildwood is whispering. It has secrets to reveal—if you're willing to listen . . . Praise for Wildwood Whispers: "A feast for the senses. Willa Reece has written a magical, romantic tale about our essential connections to nature and to each other." —Sarah Addison Allen, New York Times bestselling author “A beautifully woven tale of fantasy, feminism, and mystery set in rural Appalachia.”―Constance Sayers, author of A Witch in Time

The proceedings from the 1980 Appalachian Studies Conference includes contributions by Wilson Somerville; George W. Hopkins; Helen M. Lewis and Myles Horton; Gene Wilhelm, Jr.; Rick Simon and Betty Justice; John Opie; Stephen L. Fisher and Mary Harnish; Peter G. Marden; Ted L. Napier and Elizabeth G. Bryant; Clyde B. McCoy and Virginia McCoy Watkins; Gary L. Fowler; David P. Varady; Robert A. Rusiewski; James M. Gifford; William Terrell Cornett; P.J. Laska; Frederick O. Waage; Karen Shelley and Raymond Evans; Michael V. Carter; and James Robert Reese.

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.

Essays by the foremost labor historian of the Black experience in the Appalachian coalfields. This collection brings together nearly three decades of research on the African American experience, class, and race relations in the Appalachian coal industry. It shows how, with deep roots in the antebellum era of chattel slavery, West Virginia's Black working class gradually picked up steam during the emancipation years following the Civil War and dramatically expanded during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. From there, African American Workers and the Appalachian Coal Industry highlights the decline of the region's Black industrial proletariat under the impact of rapid technological, social, and political changes following World War II. It underscores how all miners suffered unemployment and outmigration from the region as global transformations took their toll on the coal industry, but emphasizes the disproportionately painful impact of declining bituminous coal production on African American workers, their families, and their communities. Joe Trotter not only reiterates the contributions of proletarianization to our knowledge of US labor and working-class history but also draws attention to the gender limits of studies of Black life that focus on class formation, while calling for new transnational perspectives on the subject. Equally important, this volume illuminates the intellectual journey of a noted labor historian with deep family roots in the southern Appalachian coalfields.

"Examines both the roots and the resonance of Neema Avashia's identity as a queer desi Appalachian woman. With lyric and narrative explorations of foodways, religion, sports, standards of beauty, social media, and gun culture"--