Uncovering Appalachia’s Hidden Heroines: Pauletta Hansel Reveals Untold Stories in Understory
The book’s title came a year or two into my research and writing. In ecology, the understory is the growth along the forest floor that is shadowed by the larger vegetation and ignored by the casual visitor, but absolutely essential to the health of the ecosystem. By the time I started thinking about titles, I had already determined that my manuscript was about the women of my family, and of our country and region, and this definition seemed spot-on. “Understory” at the time was the name of a single poem. And, of course, from an historical standpoint, there are always stories beneath the larger narrative which seldom get told. I’ll also say that my decision to focus on women was not as much a decision as an obsession. I have been writing about Appalachian women for as long as I have been writing, more than 50 years now, beginning as a teenaged poet in a small Kentucky town.
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