Foxfire—the oral history project dating back to 1966 in Rabun County, Georgia—has over the years produced a good number of books. The list continues with Kami Ahrens’ newly published “Foxfire Book of Appalachian Women,” a collection of 21 interview narratives.
Photo Above: Kami Ahrens, editor. The Foxfire Book of Appalachian Women: Stories of Landscape and Community in the Mountain South. (University of North Carolina Press, 2023). 268 pp.
Some of the women included in the new volume were born at the end of the 19th century: Their stories are from a different time in our mountains. Women like Maude Conley Shope, who swore “because she felt like it” and built her life on being “honest and truthful,” riding her mule to town rather than learning how to drive. Addie Parker Norton, born in 1891, devoted her life to raising her family and carrying on shape-note singing.
Some of the women interviewed by Ahrens for the book were born much later—in the 1970s and ‘80s—with wide-ranging cultural backgrounds and jobs. Women like Dakota Brown, who oversees educational programming at the Museum of the Cherokee Indian and works to preserve Cherokee culture and language. And Sandra Macias Glichowski, who owns a toy store in Clayton, Georgia, and says, “I don’t think I’ve ever felt as free in any other places as here. Or inspired.”
Every woman’s voice in the book is deeply grounded in place, and the community built in this newest Foxfire volume is celebratory and strong. It’s a beautiful blend of past and present, with the future a bright possibility.
Kami Ahrens, editor. The Foxfire Book of Appalachian Women: Stories of Landscape and Community in the Mountain South. (University of North Carolina Press, 2023). 268 pp.
The story above first appeared in our March / April 2024 issue.
