Hill Women: Finding Family and a Way Forward in the Appalachian Mountains
(Adobe EPUB eBook, Kindle Book, OverDrive Read)
“Destined to be compared to Hillbilly Elegy and Educated.”—BookPage (starred review)
“Poverty is enmeshed with pride in these stories of survival.”—Associated Press
Nestled in the Appalachian mountains, Owsley County is one of the poorest counties in both Kentucky and the country. Buildings are crumbling and fields sit vacant, as tobacco farming and coal mining decline. But strong women are finding creative ways to subsist in their hollers in the hills.
Cassie Chambers grew up in these hollers and, through the women who raised her, she traces her own path out of and back into the Kentucky mountains. Chambers’s Granny was a child bride who rose before dawn every morning to raise seven children. Despite her poverty, she wouldn’t hesitate to give the last bite of pie or vegetables from her garden to a struggling neighbor. Her two daughters took very different paths: strong-willed Ruth—the hardest-working tobacco farmer in the county—stayed on the family farm, while spirited Wilma—the sixth child—became the first in the family to graduate from high school, then moved an hour away for college. Married at nineteen and pregnant with Cassie a few months later, Wilma beat the odds to finish school. She raised her daughter to think she could move mountains, like the ones that kept her safe but also isolated her from the larger world.
Cassie would spend much of her childhood with Granny and Ruth in the hills of Owsley County, both while Wilma was in college and after. With her “hill women” values guiding her, Cassie went on to graduate from Harvard Law. But while the Ivy League gave her knowledge and opportunities, its privileged world felt far from her reality, and she moved back home to help her fellow rural Kentucky women by providing free legal services.
Appalachian women face issues that are all too common: domestic violence, the opioid crisis, a world that seems more divided by the day. But they are also community leaders, keeping their towns together in the face of a system that continually fails them. With nuance and heart, Chambers uses these women’s stories paired with her own journey to break down the myth of the hillbilly and illuminate a region whose poor communities, especially women, can lead it into the future.
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Cassie Chambers. (2020). Hill Women: Finding Family and a Way Forward in the Appalachian Mountains. Random House Publishing Group.
Chicago / Turabian - Author Date Citation (style guide)Cassie Chambers. 2020. Hill Women: Finding Family and a Way Forward in the Appalachian Mountains. Random House Publishing Group.
Chicago / Turabian - Humanities Citation (style guide)Cassie Chambers, Hill Women: Finding Family and a Way Forward in the Appalachian Mountains. Random House Publishing Group, 2020.
MLA Citation (style guide)Cassie Chambers. Hill Women: Finding Family and a Way Forward in the Appalachian Mountains. Random House Publishing Group, 2020.
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- bioText: Cassie Chambers grew up in eastern Kentucky. She graduated from Yale College, the Yale School of Public Health, the London School of Economics, and Harvard Law School, where she was president of the Harvard Legal Aid Bureau, a student-run law firm that represents low-income clients. Chambers then received a Skadden Fellowship to return to Kentucky to do legal work with domestic violence survivors in rural communities. In 2018, she helped pass Jeanette’s Law, which eliminated the requirement that domestic violence survivors pay an incarcerated spouse’s legal fees in order to get a divorce. She lives in Louisville with her husband and their son.
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- After rising from poverty to earn two Ivy League degrees, an Appalachian lawyer pays tribute to the strong “hill women” who raised and inspired her, and whose values have the potential to rejuvenate a struggling region.
“Destined to be compared to Hillbilly Elegy and Educated.”—BookPage (starred review)
“Poverty is enmeshed with pride in these stories of survival.”—Associated Press
Nestled in the Appalachian mountains, Owsley County is one of the poorest counties in both Kentucky and the country. Buildings are crumbling and fields sit vacant, as tobacco farming and coal mining decline. But strong women are finding creative ways to subsist in their hollers in the hills.
Cassie Chambers grew up in these hollers and, through the women who raised her, she traces her own path out of and back into the Kentucky mountains. Chambers’s Granny was a child bride who rose before dawn every morning to raise seven children. Despite her poverty, she wouldn’t hesitate to give the last bite of pie or vegetables from her garden to a struggling neighbor. Her two daughters took very different paths: strong-willed Ruth—the hardest-working tobacco farmer in the county—stayed on the family farm, while spirited Wilma—the sixth child—became the first in the family to graduate from high school, then moved an hour away for college. Married at nineteen and pregnant with Cassie a few months later, Wilma beat the odds to finish school. She raised her daughter to think she could move mountains, like the ones that kept her safe but also isolated her from the larger world.
Cassie would spend much of her childhood with Granny and Ruth in the hills of Owsley County, both while Wilma was in college and after. With her “hill women” values guiding her, Cassie went on to graduate from Harvard Law. But while the Ivy League gave her knowledge and opportunities, its privileged world felt far from her reality, and she moved back home to help her fellow rural Kentucky women by providing free legal services.
Appalachian women face issues that are all too common: domestic violence, the opioid crisis, a world that seems more divided by the day. But they are also community leaders, keeping their towns together in the face of a system that continually fails them. With nuance and heart, Chambers uses these women’s stories paired with her own journey to break down the myth of the hillbilly and illuminate a region whose poor communities, especially women, can lead it into the future. - reviews
- premium: True
- source:
- content:
September 9, 2019
Women in Kentucky’s Appalachian community come into focus in lawyer Chambers’s powerful debut memoir, which aims to put a human face on a stereotyped region. Kentucky native Chambers spent much of her youth in impoverished Owsley County, where her sharecropper grandparents maintained a tobacco farm. Chambers highlights three women who exemplify Appalachian strength: her scrappy grandmother (whose “joy hid the poverty”); her resilient aunt, who sacrificed personal ambition to help run the farm; and her trailblazing mother, who became the first person in the family to graduate from college. Chambers credits them with supporting her as she forged her own path, which included attending Yale and Harvard Law School. Upon graduation, Chambers moved back to Kentucky to provide legal assistance to the poor. She recounts her work on behalf of low-income women, including helping domestic violence victims, and touches on her role as vice-chair for the state Democratic Party. Chambers acknowledges Appalachia’s problems, such as water pollution and the drug epidemic, but these sections—sporadically interspersed throughout the book— only skim the surface of Appalachia’s issues. Still, this is a passionate memoir, one that honors Appalachia’s residents, especially its women.
- premium: True
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October 15, 2019
A family memoir that celebrates the inspiration of strong women within a rural culture most often characterized as patriarchal. Chambers, a member of the Democratic National Committee, knows how fortunate she was to experience the world beyond her Appalachian home in Kentucky and, especially, to graduate from Yale and Harvard Law. Yet she could not have done so without the examples of her mother, the first in her family to graduate from high school as well as college, and her grandmother. "I don't have enough ways to honor them, these women of the Appalachian hills," she writes. "Women who built a support system for me and the others. The best way I know is to tell their stories." Chambers provides information about Appalachia in general, including the poverty and lack of resources, the collapse of the coal and tobacco industries, and the drug epidemics that have decimated the region. There are also stories that illuminate the hardworking spirit and flashes of hope among the populace, the women in particular. People in these communities supported each other because they knew that no one else would; "generosity was both an insurance policy and a deeply held value." But the primary story is personal, as the author chronicles how she left home to discover a world of privilege amid the privileged. After graduating from Yale, she had "figured out the system, the code, the secret password into this world that had seemed so mysterious for so long....But...as I fit in more at Yale, I fit in less in the mountains. I didn't know how to be both of these people at the same time." The various narrative strands come together as Chambers returns home to provide legal aid to those who can't afford it. She relates the stories of women battling poverty, domestic violence, drug habits, and other ills that run rampant throughout the region. Ultimately, it was home in Kentucky that she found her purpose, identity, and voice. A welcome addition to the expanding literature about coming-of-age in Appalachia.COPYRIGHT(2019) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
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December 1, 2019
Chambers's debut is first and foremost a family memoir that chronicles her personal journey from her home in Appalachia to the Ivy League and back again, while highlighting the women in her life who provided inspiration. Chambers's mother, Wilma, had an indomitable will that helped her become the first in her family to graduate from college. The author's grandmother and Aunt Ruth, both of whom remained in Owsley County, KY, raising families, running the farm, and helping neighbors survive, are also a focus. These women were role models who encouraged Chambers to recognize the importance of education; she would later go on to earn degrees from Yale and Harvard Law School. After graduation, Chambers returned to Kentucky to work in legal services. She describes the many pitfalls in the system for those living in poverty as well as the persistent problems facing the region, including unemployment, water pollution from mining, and the opioid epidemic. VERDICT A passionate, hopeful vision of the women of Appalachia and the many individuals and families who depend on their support and willingness to give back to others.--Theresa Muraski, Univ. of Wisconsin-Stevens Point Lib.
Copyright 2019 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
- premium: True
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November 15, 2019
Owsley County is the poorest county in the state of Kentucky, and second poorest in the entire U.S. But it is here, in this small, stagnant, but proud Appalachian holler, where Chambers and her beloved kinfolk have grown up and lived for generations. In this poignant, fascinating, and heartwarming memoir, Chambers pays tribute to her granny, mother, and aunt, the "Hill Women" whose strength and passion propelled Chambers to earn two Ivy League degrees. While Chambers goes into detail on the inaccuracy of the brand hillbilly, she also points out that her hill people are strong, creative, hardworking, and "more complex than the outside world believed." She admittedly struggles with how to portray both parts of Owsley: the extreme staggering poverty and lack of healthcare residents experience versus the hardworking grit, hope, and spark of people who don't ever give up. Indeed, with Chambers' focus on the three women who deeply affected her, it is little wonder she's returned to Kentucky as an adult to provide free legal services and to help women like them.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)
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“Destined to be compared to Hillbilly Elegy and Educated.”—BookPage (starred review)
“Poverty is enmeshed with pride in these stories of survival.”—Associated Press
Nestled in the Appalachian mountains, Owsley County is one of the poorest counties in both Kentucky and the country. Buildings are crumbling and fields sit vacant, as tobacco farming and coal mining decline. But strong women are finding creative ways to subsist in their hollers in the hills.
Cassie Chambers grew up in these hollers and, through the women who raised her, she traces her own path out of and back into the Kentucky mountains. Chambers’s Granny was a child bride who rose... - sortTitle
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