Uncovering Appalachia’s Hidden Heroines: Pauletta Hansel Reveals Untold Stories in Understory
Historians are not interested in poor Appalachian women. Add to this the ways that industrialization of the mountains effectively separated families, especially women who left ancestral homes to follow their husbands, thus limiting the transference of family lore. When we moved Mom from her home to a dementia unit, we found a 500-page handwritten memoir she had written some years before her illness. If she wanted to tell her story that badly, who is to say that the women before her had not also had that desire, but no way to fulfill it. Surely, with all my education and the fact that I am a writer by trade, I can do it for them. Surely, that is both my obligation and my honor. And maybe, just maybe, the fact that I have no children, while most before my mother had a dozen or so each, contributes to my freedom to take on a project such as this.
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