Title

Seeing Inside the Mountains: Cynthia Rylant's Appalachian Literature and the "Hillbilly" Stereotype

Author(s)/Creator(s)

Karen Roggenkamp, Texas A & M University - CommerceFollow

Publication Title

The Lion and the Unicorn

Document Type

Article

Abstract/Description

If Ob, as a West Virginia native, possesses the ability to see The Mysteries where others see only primitivistic whittling or, more pejoratively, tacky wooden trash cluttering the yards of mountain families, then Rylant's Appalachian works likewise depict characters who possess an ability to see beyond external markers and predictable interpretations, and who seek an emotional and spiritual interiority based on family, love, and sense of place. Rylant's words in The Relatives Came, When I Was Young in the Mountains, and Missing May work to restore the integrity of Appalachia as a place of "interior" values, a setting that symbolizes family, personal integrity, emotion, intellectual curiosity, unconditional love, and community, in spite of the long history of the hillbilly stereotype.

Department

Literature and Languages

First Page

192

Last Page

215

Volume

32

Issue

2

ISSN

10806563

Date

4-2008

Comments

Copyright © 2008 Karen Roggenkamp. This article first appeared in The Lion and the Unicorn, Vol. 32 (2): 2008, 192-215. Reprinted with permissions by Johns Hopkins University Press.

Citation Information

Roggenkamp. (2008). Seeing inside the mountains: Cynthia Rylant’s Appalachian literature and the “Hillbilly” stereotype. The Lion and the Unicorn (Brooklyn), 32(2), 192–215. https://doi.org/10.1353/uni.0.0008