APPALACHIANIAN MOUNTAIN VOICES

APPALACHIAHIAN MOUNTAIN VOICES

This book by 38 year old Warren Moore is of the back dirt roads and outhouses of the Great Smoky and Blue Ridge Mountains where she talks with the people of the region and fueled her passion to have their voices heard so what they had to say did not get lost. It's the nuts and bolts of a social history.

Moore is a New York teacher who took a 'leave of absence' , living in Greensboro , close to where she could spend time in the mountains where the blacktop ends. Wanting to see what they had to says she found

out how little as known about these people and how important it was to

have their voices heard.

The Stereotype is that they are lazy, barefoot hillbillies, people who did not go to school nor sent their kids to school and she

found they seldom gave interviews, they are homemakers, farmers,

hunters, musicians, craftsmen and Cherokee Indians, and need really know you before they open up and portray them on their terms.

These folks are philosophers realizing what is important , taking

difficulties with a grin and going on with life. Bea Hensley a Spruce

Pine blacksmith has a theory that you are born to live, making a living is

secondary. Monetary value has nothing to do with living.

Abstract: March 18, 1989 Wilmington News Journal