Radio Bristol Book Club

Tune in to WBCM Radio Bristol as our Book Club explores Gone Home: Race and Roots through Appalachia by Karida L. Brown.

Date: Thursday, January 23, 2020

Time: 11:00 a.m. – 11:30 a.m. EST

Readers from Birthplace of Country Music Museum and the Bristol Public Library are coming together to explore books inspired by our region with this monthly program that airs on WBCM Radio Bristol. 

Hosted by Bristol Public Library Executive Director Amy Kimani and museum Head Curator Dr. René Rodgers, the Radio Bristol Book Club airs weekly every 4th Thursday.

Book discussions will dig deep into the feelings and questions raised by each selection, learn more about the authors, and celebrate the joys of being a bookworm!

Listeners may tune in to Radio Bristol at 100.1 FM in the Bristol area, online at ListenRadioBristol.org, or download the free Radio Bristol mobile app.

About Gone Home: Race and Roots though Appalachia

Since the 2016 presidential election, Americans have witnessed countless stories about Appalachia: its changing political leanings, its opioid crisis, its increasing joblessness, and its declining population. These stories, however, largely ignore black Appalachian lives. Karida L. Brown’s Gone Home offers a much-needed corrective to the current whitewashing of Appalachia. In telling the stories of African Americans living and working in Appalachian coal towns, Brown offers a sweeping look at race, identity, changes in politics and policy, and black migration in the region and beyond.

Drawn from over 150 original oral history interviews with former and current residents of Harlan County, Kentucky, Brown shows that as the nation experienced enormous transformation from the pre- to the post-civil rights era, so too did black Americans. In reconstructing the life histories of black coal miners, Brown shows the mutable and shifting nature of collective identity, the struggles of labor and representation, and that Appalachia is far more diverse than you think.

About the author:
Karida L. Brown is assistant professor of sociology and African American studies at the University of California, Los Angeles.