Fiction
The Birds of Opulence
Crystal Wilkinson
Generations of women in a Kentucky community live with losses and knowledge that are carried through families.
Reading list
Black Appalachian voices
Poems, recipes, and stories rooted in Kentucky and the places writers carry with them.
Read one poem from Affrilachia, one story from Water Street, and an essay from Belonging. Pay attention to how each writer names a place. Which details can a map record, and which depend on memory, family, and language?
Continue the story
Recommended reading
Poetry
Affrilachia
Frank X Walker
Walker’s poems insist on the visibility of Black lives in the language and geography of Appalachia.
Essays
Belonging: A Culture of Place
bell hooks
Essays on place, race, land, and return connect hooks’s Kentucky roots with a wider ethic of belonging.
Poetry
Perfect Black
Crystal Wilkinson
Poems consider color, family, girlhood, and the landscapes that shaped Wilkinson’s sense of home.
Memoir
Praisesong for the Kitchen Ghosts
Crystal Wilkinson
Recipes and recollections connect Appalachian foodways with the stories of Black women across generations.
Short stories
Water Street
Crystal Wilkinson
Linked stories enter the lives of neighbors in a small Kentucky community, revealing their private and shared histories.
Poetry
Head Off & Split
Nikky Finney
Finney’s poems move between family, public history, and the language that mediates what people see.