Hill Women

Hill Women

Adult nonfiction
"You don't go to Owsley County, Kentucky without a reason. You
can't take a wrong turn and accidentally end up there. It's miles to
the nearest interstate, and there's no hotel in town. It doesn't
cater to outsiders."
Recall yesterday in Dignity we were looking at the people most
of America has written off as being stupid and lazy for being left
behind by a ruthlessly individualistic and greedy society? It was
written by a man who had managed to see beyond the stereotypes to
their resiliency and sense of community in the face of problems too
complicated to be solved by any one program. In Hill Women Cassie
Chambers looks at a community many people have stereotyped and
demonized since the 2016 election--the people who voted "against their
own interests" for Donald Trump. These are her people, the community
she was born into and returned to after acquiring all the advantages
of an elite education, people who constantly face daunting challenges
with grit, creativity, and compassion for one another.
"Some people look at this image of poverty with a sense of
disgust: they see unkempt humans living in unkempt homes. Others view
it with a sense of pity: those poor people, trapped in such awful
circumstances. I try to look at it with a sense of respect: to
remember how hard they are working to survive in the overlooked corner
of the world they call home."
The sheroes of Chambers' story are the important women in her
life, each of whom faced daunting challenges. Her grandmother, as a
teen, had married into a life of raising seven children while laboring
over tasks we can achieve with the flick of a switch or turn of a
faucet: fetching water from a well, stoking the fire in the coal
stove that heated the whole house. There's her Aunt Ruth whose
ambition to be the first in her family to graduate from high school
were detailed by rheumatic fever and no way of keeping up on lessons.
With her siblings moving and starting families of their own, she
became the one to take on the backbreaking labor of helping her
sharecropper parents stay afloat. There's her mother, Wilma, who
managed to not only finish high school, but graduate from college,
balancing classwork with work and parenting.
"I don't have enough ways to honor them, these women of the
Appalachian hills. Women who built a support system for me and
others. The best way I know is to tell their stories."
Those stories are well worth reading.
Chambers doesn't gloss over the challenges they and their
families and community faced and continue to face. But she also sees
the strength, resilience, and generosity of her people. She rejects a
colleague's suggestion that if life there is so hard move the people
somewhere else.
"I believe the mountains are worth saving. People here work
hard, care about their families, are surrounded by natural beauty.
They are connected to the land and to one another in a deep and
meaningful way. There are unique values and strengths in mountain
communities."
Our country, armed with the myth of meritocracy, tends to react
to impoverished communities in stereotyped ways. We turn our back on
them, smug in the belief that if they worked harder and made better
choices they would not be suffering. Or else we operate on a savior
mentality, bringing in a simplistic solution and washing our hands of
the problem when the results don't turn out the way we expected.
I believe that Chambers would like to see solutions more along
the lines of what happened in my trailer park in 2010. In the twenty
years I'd then lived there it had passed from one slumlord to
another. We'd lived with challenges like contaminated water and
unsanded streets. Then a new challenge emerged--the park being put up
for sale for alternate uses. We'd seen what had happened in other
parks with people with nowhere else to go losing housing. Somebody
came up with the idea of becoming a cooperative. Yeah, right. People
struggling to get by paycheck to paycheck are going to buy the
property they live on? When Coastal Enterprises came in to help us
figure out how they did it with respect. We were the experts. We
were the ones who knew our community. They were there to support our
decisions. Today I see the signs of pride in ownership--the school
bus shelter, the sanding truck, the better appearance of the whole
place. And every time I turn on the tap I recall when pricey
purchased water was the only protection from fecal contamination.
Basically I think Chambers wants for her community what we all
want for ourselves--the three aspects of dignity: a way to provide for
the basic needs of self and others, reason to believe that with hard
work things can get better, and being treated with respect and valued
as having assets as well as deficits. Rather than writing her
community off as flyover country or rushing in with savior mentality,
she would like the rest of us to lend our resources to them while
respecting their expertise and agency.
On a purrrsonal note, last night for the first time in nearly a week I
went further than my mailbox--a short trip to WalMart with my
husband. I saw the associates stocking and sanitizing. I thought on
how they lack sick days or the option of distance working or any of
the protections middle class people take for granted. I tried to
thank each one. But we owe them so much more, not only during a
pandemic (although that really exacerbates inequities), but each and
every day--work that is rewarded with dignity in all three dimensions
(Jules)
Hoomans, if you are getting discouraged from the coronavirus and not
knowing what will happen here is a project. Think of all the things
you plan to do when the crisis lets up. Draw pictures and put them up
where you can see them. My Jules hooman does and that gives her
hope. And don't forget that your floof (cat) or goggie (dog) is here
to cheer you up. Remember you can't buy love but you can rescue it.
A great big shout out goes out to WalMart and other store frontline
workers who do their best to enable the public to not run out of food
and supplies for hygiene and cleaning.
Jules and Tobago Hathaway



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