Hill Women
Finding Family and a Way Forward in the Appalachian Mountains
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- $14.99
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
After rising from poverty to earn two Ivy League degrees, an Appalachian lawyer pays tribute to the strong “hill women” who raised and inspired her, and whose values have the potential to rejuvenate a struggling region.
“Destined to be compared to Hillbilly Elegy and Educated.”—BookPage (starred review)
“Poverty is enmeshed with pride in these stories of survival.”—Associated Press
Nestled in the Appalachian mountains, Owsley County is one of the poorest counties in both Kentucky and the country. Buildings are crumbling and fields sit vacant, as tobacco farming and coal mining decline. But strong women are finding creative ways to subsist in their hollers in the hills.
Cassie Chambers grew up in these hollers and, through the women who raised her, she traces her own path out of and back into the Kentucky mountains. Chambers’s Granny was a child bride who rose before dawn every morning to raise seven children. Despite her poverty, she wouldn’t hesitate to give the last bite of pie or vegetables from her garden to a struggling neighbor. Her two daughters took very different paths: strong-willed Ruth—the hardest-working tobacco farmer in the county—stayed on the family farm, while spirited Wilma—the sixth child—became the first in the family to graduate from high school, then moved an hour away for college. Married at nineteen and pregnant with Cassie a few months later, Wilma beat the odds to finish school. She raised her daughter to think she could move mountains, like the ones that kept her safe but also isolated her from the larger world.
Cassie would spend much of her childhood with Granny and Ruth in the hills of Owsley County, both while Wilma was in college and after. With her “hill women” values guiding her, Cassie went on to graduate from Harvard Law. But while the Ivy League gave her knowledge and opportunities, its privileged world felt far from her reality, and she moved back home to help her fellow rural Kentucky women by providing free legal services.
Appalachian women face issues that are all too common: domestic violence, the opioid crisis, a world that seems more divided by the day. But they are also community leaders, keeping their towns together in the face of a system that continually fails them. With nuance and heart, Chambers uses these women’s stories paired with her own journey to break down the myth of the hillbilly and illuminate a region whose poor communities, especially women, can lead it into the future.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Women in Kentucky's Appalachian community come into focus in lawyer Chambers's powerful debut memoir, which aims to put a human face on a stereotyped region. Kentucky native Chambers spent much of her youth in impoverished Owsley County, where her sharecropper grandparents maintained a tobacco farm. Chambers highlights three women who exemplify Appalachian strength: her scrappy grandmother (whose "joy hid the poverty"); her resilient aunt, who sacrificed personal ambition to help run the farm; and her trailblazing mother, who became the first person in the family to graduate from college. Chambers credits them with supporting her as she forged her own path, which included attending Yale and Harvard Law School. Upon graduation, Chambers moved back to Kentucky to provide legal assistance to the poor. She recounts her work on behalf of low-income women, including helping domestic violence victims, and touches on her role as vice-chair for the state Democratic Party. Chambers acknowledges Appalachia's problems, such as water pollution and the drug epidemic, but these sections sporadically interspersed throughout the book only skim the surface of Appalachia's issues. Still, this is a passionate memoir, one that honors Appalachia's residents, especially its women.
Customer Reviews
Hill Women
Not superlative literature, but, just like its subjects, who are honest, caring, open minded, fatalistic but hopeful, self sacrificing, appreciative of hard work and respectful of those who achieve success the “right way”, this book a joyful read. As another person who “escaped” the Mountains to become educated in fancy Eastern schools and do scientific and medical work that benefited many, I too enjoyed the Mountain bred satisfaction of helping one person at a time. Helping those in need even when that means real sacrifice is still ingrained in the hills of Appalachia despite the grinding poverty and the lure of drugs and the draw. Thanks for letting these women shine!