Uncovering Appalachia’s Hidden Heroines: Pauletta Hansel Reveals Untold Stories in Understory
Also, though I had already known of incidents of domestic and sexual violence in the family history before I began Understory, tracing forward from this history into the lives of my own generation, including my own life, gave me a deeper understanding of the ways in which family trauma lingers beyond the lives of those directly affected.
And finally, I gained a greater awareness of how the centuries-old fight for control of the land played out in my family, and in the Appalachian region as a whole, beginning with how my family benefited directly from the removal of indigenous people and ending, at least in the book, with the economic and even physical harm caused by outside entities’ profit from the extraction of timber, coal, gas, and oil. Members of my family participated in this extraction, certainly, but I look at that as more survival than sin.
Post Comment