Summary

Geographer Stian Rice demonstrates how the current solutions to fix our broken food system miss the point. He argues that our food system isn’t broken—in fact, it’s working just fine as a capitalist system that generates wealth—and that the harms it inflicts are intentional. Elsewhere examines the 250-year history of the US food system, uncovering how the country used abundance to enrich some and exploit others and how it captured, colonized, and reorganized territory to conceal its harms. To keep generating wealth, the system moves its violence around, away from privileged producers and consumers and into forgettable elsewhere: reservations, prisons, distant islands, killing floors, inner cities, rural hinterlands, and war-torn countries. Rice shows how decades of technological innovation, environmental awareness, and consumer consciousness have not, and will not, staunch these self-inflicted wounds until we can nurture a food system that does not profit from harm.

Contents

List of Figures

Preface

Introduction: “The Food System Is Broken”

1 Divide and Cultivate: Removals, Reservations, and the Making of Elsewhere

2 Scatological Imperialism: Squandering Soil and Grabbing Guano for Ravenous Monocultures

3 Grand Theft Agriculture: Japanese American Incarceration and California’s Produce Empire

4 Grain, Grain Everywhere: Technology, Policy, and the Making of Excess

5 Invade, Aid, Trade: Making the World Safe for Profit

6 Of Meat and Migrants: Domesticating Humans and Animals Through Economies of Scale

7 Hunger Is Not a Polygon: Making Place for Malnutrition on the National Map

Conclusion: If It Ain’t Broke, Break It

 Acknowledgments

Author

Stian Rice is a geographer whose work examines the origins of violence in the food system. He has written about famine, genocide, and structural violence for academic and general audiences since 2012 and is the author of Famine in the Remaking: Food System Change and Mass Starvation in Hawaii, Madagascar, and Cambodia. He is assistant research scientist with the Center for Urban Environmental Research at the University of Maryland Baltimore County, and teaches geography at Anne Arundel Community College in Arnold, Maryland. Rice received his PhD in geography from Kent State University. 

Praise

Summary

This collection of over thirty pieces explores the connections between Appalachia’s stories, traditions, and modern events and the pathway to regional sustainability. The contributors—writers and scholars—consider what sustainability means in an Appalachian context and demonstrate how to utilize regional knowledge to achieve it, while offering specific actions for readers.

Contents

Land Acknowledgment

Preface – Jessica M. Jones

Acknowledgments

Introduction - Amanda E. Hayes

I. Roots and Brambles: The Nature of Appalachian Sustainability

1. Aunt Bett’s Beans - Ivy Brashear 
2. The Walker Sisters: Preservation, Human Spectacle, and Land Use in Southern Appalachia - Nicole Drewitz-Crockett
3. Camp Elizabeth–Who I Am, Where I’m From - Liz Emmerth Rexroad 
4. Dark Ecology and the Monstrous Mother in Old Gods of Appalachia - Paul Thomas
5. Misadventures with Backyard Chickens: Lessons on Heritage and Homesteading - Lockie Hunter
6. A Man Around the House: Lessons in Dumpster Diving and Sustainability - Lockie Hunter
7. Falling Rock Area - Deborah Fleming 
8. Homecoming: Love Notes on Sustainability for Appalachia - Sarah Powell

II.  Seeds and Saplings: Witness for Sustainability

1. Haunted in Place: Folktale Pedagogy - Taylor Nasim Stone
2. The Witches They Could Not Burn: Writing as Resistance in Appalachia - Sarah Long

Teaching with the Mountains: Reflections on Place and Identity in Science Education - Amanda Garner

1. Loyalty and Truth: Navigating Environmental Justice Conversations as a Coal Miner’s Daughter - Kristen LeFevers
2. Embodied Practices: Sustaining Students from Appalachia after Hurricane Helene - Elizabeth Weems
3. Foul and Fertile Ground: The Legacy Pollution of Coal Extraction and Its Implications on a Sustainable Appalachian Future - Aysha Bodenhamer and Luc Biscan-White 
4. Sustaining Appalachian Mobilities: Connecting Rail Trails with Local Histories in Western North Carolina - Matthew Calloway
5. An Abolitionist Future for Appalachia - Meghan Moore-Hubbard 
6. Fractured Lives, Resistant Roots: A Braided Essay Across Three Voices - Jessica Radicic
7. Residues and Regeneration in Northern Appalachia - David Blackmore
8. Walking the Homeplace - Jessica M.  Jones

III. Branches and Boughs: Reaching Toward Sustainability

1. Practice Everyday Wisdom—Appalachia Style - Larry Smith
2. Grow Porch Potatoes - Amanda E. Hayes  
3. Find Your Wild Place - Sarah Long
4. Map Your Appalachian Soft Skills - Sarah Powell
5. Rewild Your Yard - Jessica Jones 
6. Read Roadside Markers  - Matthew Calloway
7. Help Incarcerated Folks  - Meghan Moore Hubbard
8. Investigate Sustainability Practices in Appalachia - Kristen LeFevers
9. Hunt for Your Ancestral Stories - Elizabeth Tussey
10. Be a Creek Keeper - Richard Hague
11. Support Gender Identity  - Barbara Marie Minney
12. Cultivate an Eco-Friendly Household  - Patrice Stank
13. Take Part in Mutual Aid   - Christina Fisanick
14. Walk a Haiku Path to Advocacy - Barbara Sabol
15. Dance with the Ones that Came Before - Greg Bealer 
16. Be Our Best Selves - Kari Gunter-Seymour
17. Support Sustainable Efforts Across the Region  - Amanda E. Hayes and Jessica M. Jones

Bibliography

Contributors

Index

Editors

Jessica M. Jones serves as full-time faculty at Kent State University, where she teaches creative writing, Native American literature and place-based composition. She comes from a long line of makers and musicians in Northern Appalachia and prefers to live life out of doors. She holds a master’s from the University of Montana with K-12 licensure and training in Montana Indian Education for All. Her poetry and essays have been published in numerous journals and anthologies, and her chapbook, Bitterroot, can be found at Finishing Line Press.

Amanda E. Hayes teaches English and composition at Kent State University-Tuscarawas. Raised on a multigenerational family farm in Appalachian Ohio, she now researches and writes about regional traditions of literacy, storytelling, and education. Her works include The Politics of Appalachian Rhetoric and The Madison Women: Gender, Higher Education, and Literacy in Nineteenth-Century Appalachia.

Contributors: Greg Bealer, Luc Biscan-White, David Blackmore, Aysha Bodenhamer, Ivy Brashear, Matthew Calloway, Nicole Drewitz-Crockett, Christina Fisanick, Deborah Fleming, Amanda V. Garner, Karie Gunter-Seymour, Richard Hague, Amanda E. Hayes, Lockie Hunter, Jessica M. Jones, Kristen LeFevers, Sarah Long, Meghan Moore-Hubbard, Barbara Marie Minney, Jessica Radicic, Elizabeth Emmerth Rexroad, Barbara Sabol, Larry Smith, Patrice Stank, Taylor Nasim Stone, Paul Thomas, Elizabeth Tussey, and Betsy Weems.

Praise

“Wide Branches, Deep Roots is a joy to anyone who has known the truth all along—that sustainability and environmental stewardship in the Appalachian region is not just a passing fad, but an inherited practice since the region’s inception. Its impact will extend beyond the classroom to local historians, community organizers, and environmental activists who will find in it a mirror for their lived experiences accompanied with strong models of sustainable, place-based advocacy.”  –  Marti Wagnon, assistant professor of English in the School of Writing, Language, and Literature at Radford University

Summary

The late 1960s found young, middle-class, white Americans embracing localism to escape federal bureaucracies and an increasingly impersonal society. The “back-to-the-landers” took this one step further by moving to rural areas, including Appalachia, in pursuit of self-reliance, liberation, and community. They championed agrarian decentralization, a vision of reform based on self-provisioning, neighborly reciprocity, and small-scale manufacturing. And they shared an interest in preserving folkways and certain social conventions and in protecting their farming communities against the threat of surface coal mining. Although localism seemed to be the solution for democratizing these communities, a conservative political shift scaling back federal regulation instead placed power in the hands of a new local and state political elite that did not share their values, leaving these agrarian communities more vulnerable to the threat of surface mining. 

Contents

List of Figures

Acknowledgments

Introduction: Decentralist Fever

Chapter 1 – Appalachian Localism and the Back-to-the-Land Movement

Chapter 2 – Going “Guerilla” in the War on Poverty

Chapter 3 – From Heathcote to Hamlin

Chapter 4 – Appalachia’s Heirs

Chapter 5 – Trust in the Hills

Chapter 6 – Hooray for the Outsiders!

Chapter 7 – Our Struggle Is a Barometer

Conclusion

Notes

Bibliography

Index 

Author

Jinny Turman is associate professor of history at the University of Virginia’s College at Wise. She holds a PhD in history from West Virginia University. Her areas of interest include modern U.S., public, environmental, and Appalachian history. She has published in West Virginia History, Journal of Southern History, and Appalachian Journal. She is an active member of the National Council on Public History, the Appalachian Studies Association, and Society of Appalachian Historians. Turman resides with her partner and their many animals in Big Stone Gap, Virginia. This is her first book.

Praise

“Outstanding. This story has come nowhere near being told with such depth and breadth until now.” —Paul Salstrom, author of Appalachia’s Path to Dependency: Rethinking a Region's Economic History, 1730-1940 “A distinctive story. Engaging. Fascinating.” —Dona Brown, Professor of History, University of Vermont

Summary

A mother’s memoir that reckons with her son’s descent into severe mental illness. What appears to be substance use disorder in high school later becomes a dual diagnosis as bipolar disorder emerges. Her son soon grows disillusioned with prescribed pharmaceuticals and participates in a residential treatment program that assists people in forgoing medication altogether. However, the program ultimately ejects him from the community for the very behaviors that the medication once managed. The book chronicles Sandler's initial denial of her truth, her painful awakening to mental illness in her family, and her eventual acceptance that she cannot save her son—only he can save himself.

Contents

n/a

Author

Judy Sandler is a writer and educator living in mid-coast Maine. She holds an MLA from Johns Hopkins University and an MFA from Stonecoast, at the University of Southern Maine. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times’s “Tiny Love Stories,” The Atticus Review, The Perch, Pangyrus, and the Treatment Advocacy Center blog. Sandler previously taught in Baltimore area independent schools for over twenty-eight years. She is now the creative nonfiction editor for both The Stonecoast Review and The Awakenings Review. Sandler and her husband are the parents of three adult children, Alex, Lucy, and Noah.

Praise

"What Kind of Mother is a poignant, brilliantly-written evocation of what it means to come to terms with a child's addiction and mental illness, and in the process one's own struggles and history overcoming secrecy and shame, and how they conspire to destroy families from within. Absolutely unforgettable—this is a story that will stay with me forever."

—Elissa Altman, author of Permission: The New Memoirist and the Courage to Create, and Motherland

“Incredibly warm and funny and tender, this is a riveting story about what happens when we have to face our worst fears—about ourselves and the children we love. With wry humor and a wildly compelling voice, What Kind of Mother dares to do the taboo: to talk about what happens when things don't go at all according to the plan. It’s a book about taking the blinders off and a very moving love story. I could not put it down.”

—Susan Conley, author of Landslide

"Sandler's memoir delves into the poignant realization of a mother’s limitations in shielding her family from life's hardships, offering a raw and honest exploration of love, mental illness, and the struggle for redemption. What she believed she could not control she can and has controlled this narrative in a direction of pure heart. What Kind of Mother is a gem…this is art, this is literature with a capital L, literature built on the foundation of emotion, the very thing that allows any reader to connect to.”

—Morgan Talty, author of Night of the Living Rez: Stories and Fire Exit: A Novel

“What Kind of Mother is a heartbreakingly vulnerable and sobering portrayal of what it is like to watch your child spiral into addiction and reckon with the life-altering effects of mental illness. With searing honesty, Judy Sandler takes us into her complex journey of retracing the family history and parenting decisions that might make her culpable in the ongoing story of her son’s struggle to find equilibrium.” 

—Melanie Brooks, author of A Hard Silence: One Daughter Remaps Family, Grief, and Faith when HIV/AIDS Changes It All

“The narrative becomes a source of solace, forging connections among those who share in the silent struggles of nurturing and supporting adult children with mental health challenges.”

—David Goodman, MD, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine