“Beginning Again”: Katrina Powell on What Oral Histories Tell Us About Appalachia https://ift.tt/3LHWEfr
The oral history anthology Beginning Again: Stories of Movement and Migration in Appalachia is meant to challenge the stereotypes people outside the region have about who lives there, according to the collection’s editor, Katrina Powell. In 2017, she and a group of her graduate students at Virginia Tech were disturbed by the travel bans instituted in relation to particular groups of immigrants to the United States. They saw the stereotypes of Appalachia and the stereotypes of immigrants as problematic because of the diversity that has always existed in the region. They wanted to hear from the people of Appalachia themselves about why they relocated to or stayed there, despite the challenges doing so could present.
“We wanted to interview people whose families had lived here for generations, and people who might have lived here for a shorter amount of time,” Powell said about the cross-section of Appalachians she profiles. “We wanted to get a sense about their thinking about what it was like to live here, why they moved here, what connections their families might have to the land, and how living in Appalachia might be part of one’s identity, even if one had only lived here for a short amount of time.”
Powell talked with Southern Review of Books’ Lacey Lyons about the complexity of oral history and why it remains an important way to tell first-person narratives, particularly those of marginalized groups.
Why do you think the histories of displacements of various groups of people, including Black and Indigenous people, are not talked about in Appalachia? Is there something about the region that leads to this?
I think Appalachia is like a lot of places that get stereotyped, in terms of who lives there and what the history is. A larger public perception of Appalachia is that it’s largely white, or it’s largely poor, or largely working-class. Like any place, there’s much more diversity in Appalachia than is popularly known. People who live here know about the diversity. Stories that are written about Appalachia in the popular media, or in short stories or novels, will often focus on a particular group of people to highlight diversity. What I wanted to try to do was to put some of those stories in conversation with each other to show there were some common experiences across those diverse sets of people.
How did you prepare for trauma-informed interviewing, especially when you spoke with survivors of war, genocide, or other types of violence?
There are a lot of resources about trauma-informed interviewing. One of the reasons I like oral history as a method is that it focuses on the person’s whole life, not just the moment of trauma. You don’t only talk to them about that one aspect of their identity; you talk about their whole life, from birth to now, so that the trauma is put in context to their life. Their experience is not reduced to that one thing. That’s important because we have to have consent when experimental drugs are used, but there’s a sense that interviewing is not risky in the same way. It is a different kind of risk, but it is still a risk. We talk to interviewers about the risk of being interviewed. We always give the interviewee a chance to withdraw from the project. Part of trauma-informed interviewing is that it’s a collaboration. Another layer of that is recognizing the responsibility of the interviewer of being a steward of someone’s story, especially if they have experienced trauma. You could schedule eight interviews a day, one for every hour of the workday. But depending on the interviewee and the story they tell, taking care of yourself as an interviewer is also part of that. The story might make us cry, or shock us. Part of the training is talking through how you might respond so that it doesn’t further upset the interviewee. Knowing there might be some unanticipated moments is really helpful, because then, you can practice how you might react. That can make all the difference.
Some of the preparation is studying the history of groups of people. If we were going to interview someone from Syria, for instance, we tried to have a general sense of what was happening with Syria at that moment, as well as historically or religiously. It makes for much more meaningful conversation. We have lists of questions we ask people, and yet, talking to interviewers about being willing to ask follow-up questions makes it a little more comfortable for the interviewee as well.
What role does nature play in the residents’ lives once they arrive in Appalachia?
Not everyone longs for home in the same way, but that’s often a recurring theme in a resettlement narrative. There can be a wistful, nostalgic thinking about home, especially if you’ve been forcibly removed. Talking to folks about what their home landscape is like, in comparison to making a new life, was a really great part of the interviews every time. Some of the people we talked to had originally been relocated to a more urban area, and then re-resettled to a more rural area by choice. It felt more homelike to them, because they might have lived in a rural area. It was quieter, and a little easier to get around than a larger city in some ways. If one has experienced trauma, sometimes being in or near nature is one way to heal from that. For some people, relocating to rural areas was part of the resettlement process because their kids had places to be outside and have a slower pace of life. Some people feel more at home in urban areas, and of course, Appalachia contains urban areas. One of our interviewees is Monacan (Native American), and his family’s connection to this particular land is longstanding. For generations, his family has been in Appalachia. To be forcibly removed from it is a jolt that has a generational impact. Generations before, his family was forcibly removed within the Appalachia region. Trying to make a connection, not only to people, but to the landscape, can be part of moving forward from that moment.
Why are racism, discrimination, and harmful forms of nationalism themes that you could return to again and again in interviews? Your interviewee Elvir even acknowledges his own whiteness and how it affects the immigrant experience at one point when he says, “It’s a different experience here for someone who’s a white European than somebody who is of African, Middle Eastern, or Asian descent.” How did you navigate those conversations in interviews?
My approach to those moments has always been to face those conversations with a lot of humility and practicality. How can we talk about this where there is some way forward? Hopefully, by articulating one’s experience, that might contribute to a broader understanding of what racism is, and how racism can occur in multiple forms. I think people who aren’t as aware of that complexity think of racism very specifically, like calling someone a particular word. There are also moments of racism that are less recognizable to everyone. The themes that came forward were the policies that are written in a particular way that are discriminatory, or being refused housing, but being told it was for this other reason. Even though it might be uncomfortable to talk about some of these things, and the interviewer might be putting themselves in a place of vulnerability, that risk is important. Then, these stories can be heard and a broader understanding of the layers of racism can be mitigated in some way. It’s important to be willing to be uncomfortable so a space is made for these stories.
Why did you choose to include stories of people who aren’t immigrants, like Rufus, a Monacan Native American, Hannah Martin, one half of a same-sex couple who relocates to the mountains, and others like them?
We did think a lot about the order of the essays and the people we included. There was a clear juxtaposition that was somewhat purposeful to remind us that even for people who have been here for generations, there have been moments of forced removal, or a sense of one’s land not being one’s own. The United States is founded on displacement. Rufus’ family was forced to leave (their homes) and make a new home within the state, and then, with racial integrity laws, had to move again. We wanted to show the complexity of experience here in this area.
It felt like the narratives shifted when you transitioned from an immigrant story to that of a person who was born in the United States. How did you decide the order in which they’d appear? Did they have to be related in some way?
Some of the people who are elders in their communities have a different reflection on their lives than some of the younger narrators. I love Peter’s, because he is an educator who turned his land into a youth camp so urban kids could come and experience Appalachia in the way he did. Placing his story a little bit further away from Hannah’s, who was born in the United States and came to the area intentionally from somewhere else, brings the thread of their stories together. To start with Claudine’s story was also intentional. All of the stories are very powerful. But Claudine’s is clearly a refugee story. She lived in the camp for a number of years, then came with her family. Now, she has a job. There’s some ways in which that is a very stereotypical refugee narrative. And yet, her story also pushes back against some of that. Struggling to figure out how to pay for schooling is a typical American story. In some ways, her narrative is very recognizable.
Sometimes, your subjects reveal truths that are different from or more nuanced than the narratives we often hear in mainstream media. How did you deal with this?
It’s exactly what I wanted to happen. This all started when I was doing research about Shenandoah National Park, which is near where I grew up. I heard stories my whole life from people whose families had been displaced from the park. Then, reading what was written about people who had been displaced, versus hearing their stories firsthand — the two stories were contradictory. The stories written about families who were displaced were not complete. In some places, they were completely untrue. Reading people’s lived experiences of an event is where it all started for me. It’s difficult to get to that nuance when you read statistics. All of it is necessary, but what I’m hoping is that as oral history is available, then as we make policies about social programs, we take in this complexity while making those regulations.
In Babkir’s story, he talks about being friends with Sudanese immigrants in Roanoke who are members of tribes that would have been his enemies in Sudan because of political violence. How and why did the perspective that comes with living outside their home countries change the immigrants you spoke with?
For anyone moving to a new place, there are cultural differences. The shock of the move can be a lot to take in. It’s certainly a transition, but I think his willingness to share that part of the story gives us some insight into the complexity of his home country’s situation and diversity. I felt that was a moment in the story that a lot of people could relate to, no matter where they are from. One way of thinking about a group of people might not apply to this one person who’s from Sudan. He’s a teacher, and he’s really educating us about both his own learning process and the complexity of the history of his country.
Sohaila is the first subject to explicitly mention trauma and therapy. How did you approach this with her before and during the interview?
I didn’t ask about therapy. She mentioned it. Everyone’s different in terms of what they want to talk about in their interviews or how much detail they want to give. She was very determined to tell all the details, and to tell them in several different ways, of the trauma that she’d experienced. Trauma doesn’t end simply because you get on a plane. There are a lot of people involved in the resettlement process. There are volunteers who might bring food, and there are actual caseworkers, and someone else might be in charge of you when you first arrive. If you are in the middle of all of that, and you don’t know the resettlement system, how do you know who any of these people are? A couple of our interviewees were worried about trauma porn, so a couple of the narrators chose not to provide very much detail about their trauma. Sohaila was completely different. She was like, ‘You need to know what’s going on out there. Someone needs to know this is happening.’ No one was listening. I not only was listening, but I was listening for a long time, multiple times. She told the same story multiple times, but in different ways. I think she wanted to be sure I got it.
Who is your target audience for Beginning Again, and what do you hope they take from it?
I have two target audiences. One is people who think they understand what Appalachia is. I’d like their expectations to be confounded about who lives in Appalachia and what it means to be Appalachian. But I also hope this book is for people who live in Appalachia. It’s somewhat of a validation that even if your story doesn’t match one of the twelve, they’re diverse enough to send the message that lots of different kinds of people exist in this region. As an educator and oral historian, I hope people feel like they belong and their story matters.
Powell said oral historians get to “augment history… to think about history from the people who have actually experienced it,” with the understanding that even though these stories are individual experiences, they complement the historical record in essential ways. Beginning Again is her contribution to the history of immigrant experiences in the South. It was funded by Voice of Witness.
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