Book Review: Bloodroot

A Fair Trade Book

Title: Bloodroot: Reflections on Place by Appalachian Women Writers

Author: 35 authors, edited by Joyce Dyer

Date: 1998

Publisher: University Press of Kentucky

ISBN: 0-8131-2059-4

Length: 302 pages

Illustrations: black-and-white photos of the authors

Quote: "How can we shed the common notion that Appalachian women are a homogeneous group of dependent, submissive females?"

Well, as a beginning, I suggest, we could stop using the word "Appalachian." There were valid reasons why some residents of Kentucky were attracted to the idea of an Appalachian Identity, but the idea doesn't seem to have spread beyond certain college campuses in Kentucky. The majority of times I've heard "Appalachian" used to refer to people, it's been used by carpetbaggers. The rest of the time, it's been used by residents of one specific town, about which I've written as much as an occasional visitor has any right to write.

But in this book the term is used almost the way the idealists who organized Berea College intended--Ohio and West Virginia writers are included. Pennsylvania, New York, and New England writers should properly be included, too, and they're not, unless you count Lisa Alther's observations of similarities between her homes in Tennessee and Vermont. This is a book about how living amidst scenic beauty gives a person a sense of place that tends to affect that person's writing, and about how different the people, the places, and the writing can be.

I personally think these brief memoirs make a fascinating read. That's partly because I know most of the contributors' work well enough to be fascinated by the real-life backgrounds and writing processes they describe in Bloodroot.

Although the goal of inclusiveness is never completely met--some of the authors are early baby-boomers, but none was really young when Bloodroot was published and all have reached middle age by now--this book does succeed in bringing together legendary older writers like Jean Ritchie and Wilma Dykeman, contemporary bestsellers like Lisa Alther and Sharyn McCrumb, homegirls like Rita Sims Quillen , and newbies who'd published only one thin book of poetry when Bloodroot was published.

Now, because anyone who reads book reviews online deserves not to be disappointed: none of the authors comments on the "submissive" part of Dyer's question. Bloodroot is sex-free. My comment might be that Dyer may have been using "submissive" as a synonym for "abused," which it's not. Neither is it a euphemism for "masochistic." Which of these women writers do and don't prefer to take a passive position, in bed or even in conversation, is none of my business, and I'm glad to report that in Bloodroot they don't tell. (Though there are some canny comments on taking a passive position in conversation in Five Minutes in Heaven...I know numerous women in the Blue Ridge Mountains who feel and talk like Jude, though I'm glad I was brought up more like her French friends.)

What can be fairly said about all of them is that they're good writers, and each one of them will take you on a mental mini-vacation of a different, beautiful place. If you want to learn more about "regionalism" in the artistic sense of giving readers/viewers a vivid sense of place, you need this book. If you want a mellow, not airbrushed but pleasing, short piece to read before bed, you'll love Bloodroot.

And it's still a Fair Trade Book: you can find cheaper copies, but if you send $5 per book plus $5 per package plus $1 per online payment to the appropriate address, as explained in the "Greeting" post, we'll send $1 to Joyce Dyer or a charity of her choice. At least one more book of this size will fit into that $5 package; if the other one is Gum-Dipped or another book written or edited by Joyce Dyer, she or her charity will receive $2 out of your total payment of $15 or $16. I don't physically own Dyer's other books, but the whole point of being an Amazon Associate or Affiliate is that this web site can get anything Amazon sells, and if you want all of her books I'll find out whether four of them can fit into one $5 package. (For one used book, if not concerned about encouraging a living writer, you can usually get a better price directly from Amazon than from this web site. The more books you buy, the more competitive this web site's prices become.)