Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, May 16, 1993 TAG: 9305160213
SECTION: HORIZON PAGE: F-4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: PAUL DELLINGER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
The 365-page book of 16 original essays edited by Stephen L. Fisher is titled "Fighting Back in Appalachia: Traditions of Resistance and Change."
In its introduction, Fisher says the book tries to refute a Fisher mixture of national stereotypes that mistakenly stereotype Appalachia residents as "gun-happy, illiterate bumpkins who are culturally incapable of rational resistance to unjust conditions."
He contends that media coverage of the region, long plagued by unemployment and poverty, has perpetuated the myth that natives have done little to solve these problems for themselves.
Actually, Fisher says, people of the region have always worked for change and often overcome tremendous obstacles. The book documents such instances, sometimes using personal accounts by participants.
It includes essays describing a time in 1972 when a group of Knott County, Ky., women sat in the rain all day and part of a night to block bulldozers at a strip mine; the 1980 efforts of people in Yellow Creek, Ky., to organize their community to combat water and ground pollution from a tannery; the formation in Tennessee of Save Our Cumberland Mountains; organizing the Black Lung Association for disabled miners; and the 1989 United Mine Workers strike against Pittston Coal in Southwest Virginia and elsewhere.
Fisher is a West Virginia native with a bachelor's degree from Wake Forest University and a Ph.D. from Tulane University. He has taught at Emory & Henry since 1971, written 36 articles and essays and, in 1981, edited a book-length study on land ownership patterns in Appalachia.
by CNB