Beth Stephen's message for LGBTQIA+ people, artists , dreamers, and students in West Virginia
Another Appalachia: Coming up Queer and Indian in a Mountain Place by
"Commands your attention from the first page to the last word." --Morgan Jerkins "I'm glad this memoir exists . . . and I'm especially glad it's so good." --Vauhini Vara, New York Magazine When Neema Avashia tells people where she's from, their response is nearly always a disbelieving "There are Indian people in West Virginia?" A queer Asian American teacher and writer, Avashia fits few Appalachian stereotypes. But the lessons she learned in childhood about race and class, gender and sexuality continue to inform the way she moves through the world today: how she loves, how she teaches, how she advocates, how she struggles. Another Appalachia examines both the roots and the resonance of Avashia's identity as a queer desi Appalachian woman, while encouraging readers to envision more complex versions of both Appalachia and the nation as a whole. With lyric and narrative explorations of foodways, religion, sports, standards of beauty, social media, gun culture, and more, Another Appalachia mixes nostalgia and humor, sadness and sweetness, personal reflection and universal questions.
Becoming AppalAsian by
Becoming AppalAsian is a homage to Lisa Kwong's parents, ancestors, ancestral land, homeland, and chosen land. China influences the cadence through which she experiences all spaces, whether that be Radford, Virginia where she worked as a waitress in her parents' restaurant or in Bloomington, Indiana as an artist and academic in a predominantly white University town. Lisa carries the pride of her father's quest to achieve the American Dream as a Chinese immigrant as well as the triumph and turmoil of defying stereotypes in a western landscape. She is AppalAsian: a Southern woman of Asian descent raised in Appalachia who lays claim to soul food, a Southern drawl, chicken feet, and dumplings. Her poetry offers fresh language to express the complexities of her identity. -Ciara Miller, author of Silver Bullet and founder/CEO of Miller's Learning Center (Chicago)
