15 minute intervals and then there will be 15 minutes for all of you to ask any questions that you may have them. The first panelist is doctor thomas g burton, he is a Professor Emeritus of english at East Tennessee State University and hes produced three documentaries on serpent handling and is the author of serpent handling believers, the serpent and the spirit and Beach Mountain man, the memoirs of rhonda lee hicks. His most recent book voices worth the listening, three women of appalachia is out now from mercuryuniversity press. Join me in welcoming doctor thomas burton. The next person that i would like to introduce is sarah wendy dinwiddie. Sarah smarsh is a canvas based journalist who has recorded for the guardian and many other publications. Her first book heartland a memoir of working hard and being broken the richest country on earth which was a finalist for the national. 2015 research are centered on media, sarah smarsh, she come by at natural probably the women are now signing where Wayne Winkler. Wayne winkler is a c very near where im from past president of the london heritage association. He is director of the public Radio Station went as an and lives in johnson city tennessee. His most recent book beyond the sunset, the knowledge and outdoor trauma 1969 to 1976. Please all our and i believe you will get from doctor. Thank you very much. A pleasure for me to be a part of the goal again this year. Add half an opportunity to introduce you to this book, voices worth listening three women appalachia published by the university of tennessee press. This book as the title suggests is the presentation of the lives of three women appalachia you are white, what. One important feature of this book that are told by women themselves in their own voices from multiple interviews i personally made with. These interviews are blended and crafted from their free speech to form unified. The monologues however attempt to retain the integrity of each persons speech voice. They attempt also as much as possible to recreate and print the experience of personally talking or listening to these people. Certain details are authored and thats in accordance with your wishes. So that they remain anonymous. In a way, these women are presented somewhat like characters in a play. Characters who speak directly to their audience in their own language without interruption and without detailed analytical interpretation. Analytical, scholarly interpretation of people for helpful. Yet on the other, they can overstate a single critical perception or they can restrict best other perspectives. A literary statement by a remarkable actor director sir Laurence Olivier at the beginning of his fellowhamlet. Olivier says this is the tragedy of a man who cannot make up his mind. The statement does provide dramatic focus for the film, but it is nevertheless a very restrictive commentary of one of the worlds most complex dramatic. Hamlet is forced a great deal more than a man cannot make up his mind. The same point over emphasis and restriction is relative to critical analysis of appalachians and of appalachia. However, to repeat this book instead of being a critical analysis is a presentation of the lives of these voices of these women themselves. And you the readers have the opportunity to respond to them in your own emotional and intellectual insights and as the title suggests, the voices of these women are certainly worth listening. Furthermore, the voices are worth the listening for several reasons. If for no other reason they are worth listening to because they are the voices of really interesting, very complex human beings. These lies live off the beaten path. They are people that you dont meet every day or if you did meet them, you probably couldnt even guess the roads they have traveled. For me personally and i heard the stories of the lives of these three women and i was really blown away. I could hardly believe what i was hearing. But they were true nevertheless. They were forthright, deeply personal revelations of real people. Real human beings, struggling with raising endurance against tremendous odds. Certainly some of those odds are of their own making. Some of them however our odds over which they have had little or no control. But unfortunately in the language of shakespeare when sorrows come they come not single sized but in battalions. Let me list for you just some of the sea of troubles they collectively confront. For example, various criminal circumstances which include homicide, assault and battery , theft, rape, attempted murder, drug addiction and imprisonment. Domestic problems. Parental dysfunction, childhood pregnancies, loss of child custody multiple dysfunctional intimate relationships including physical and mental spousal abuse. Social problems, childhood bullying and Racial Discrimination and gender discrimination. Economic instability, either starting in poverty or ending in poverty. Homelessness, joblessness and insufficient Financial Support by family, friends and our government. Besides all these slings and arrows of how race misfortune, they have to bear arms against personaldemons as well. Low selfesteem, irresponsibility, nacvetc. Bizarre sexual involvement. Despondency and despair. Leading even to attempted suicide. Its almost incredible the whips and storms these people there and with great fortitude. Certainly these women are not unique in their struggles. In fact, they are in part representative of a whole category of women across appalachia as well as across america. The whole sector of women who like them struggle greatly in lies off the beaten path. As the cover design of this book attempts to image, they exist across appalachia like a seam of wasps weve all seen as weve driven through a constant mountain pass. These women are in part representative but they are not technically stereotypes. Not of hillbillies, not of coal miners daughters. Unemployed workers on welfare. They are not simply stereotypes of any group of southern appalachians or stereotypes of any sector of appalachia. I would be quick to add that any attempt to definitively label types or to define the essence of any or sector of appalachia as varied and complex as they both are is a fools game this book, anyone attempting to define the essence of these women would be subject to a reproof by each woman in the sentiment of hamlet. How unworthy a thing you make of me. You would plot out the heart of my mystery. Even though these women are not simply stereotypes of appalachians, they are part of the diversey of appalachia. And to understand appalachia, one needs to listen to the diverse individuals of appalachia. There is much music, much excellent voice in the people of appalachia and certainly in the voices of the women presented in this book. I would like now to take the opportunity to read an abstract from the first novel which is entitled some would call her a good old girl. Im not perfect. No one is perfect. Everyone makes mistakes and i did a lot of things. There were times and ive been tempted to have relations with women along with them. Sometimes may, we would have to was for you, not me. Its not fun when you are forced to do it. I would go into the bathroom and cry. No one would believe the times ive run out of the room just bawling my eyes out. I hated it. It was awful. I hated doing it because of diseases and stuff out there. I just think, i just thank the lord that i never got anything. That scared me to death. Ive kind of blocked out that part. I get so drunk i would have to go get so drunk. I mean plastered to do this. So a lot of times i dont remember what happened all that well i was going to begin. He just threatened me. If you dont do this youre going to regret when you get home. It just hurts to see someone you truly love me love with someone else. Why would they want to do that if they truly love you . You should be happy in your marriage. You shouldnt be sad but i was sad, very sad and there were lots of things that were just literally, its almost disgusting todiscuss or talk about some things. It turns yourstomach. He forced me to do other weird things like he would hold me down and take razor blades and cut himself and cut myself and we would have to eat each others blood. It was crazy. And if i even brought up the thought of leaving him at that point, he threatened to kill himself. It was horrible. When you care and love somebody you just dont like doing that stuff. It turned him on, i guess. I dont think it was fun and games. Its just that was what you wanted. Its his sex drive or whatever and thats what he enjoys doing. Later on i came to find out when he was traveling on the road and i was sending him money to survive because he said we were making enough money to eat and stuff. Actually he was taking the money i was sending him for prostitutes, drunks or whatever. And i was working two jobs. When you are in an abusive relationship some people think you can just walk out of it but cant. You see these tv shows and they say if you are being abused or in neglect call this number and we will help you. Its just not that simple. Especially if you love that person or it you care for that person and you want to be there help them. Its really hard to walk away from somebody. Its also hard to explain. Im a caring person. You dont want to do anything to hurt a person you really care about even though they are hurting even if you give them the way not as they will. Its hard. That was the situation during the open marriage for pretty much the rest of our being together. So off and on for 10 years of the 13 years married but all that stuff wasnt constant. It was just every once in a while. Although i would have to say no a lot. And then he would get really mad. I just couldnt handle it. Im just not that kind of person. Thank you. You so much doctor burton. I really enjoyed hearingfrom you. Next we have sarah smarsh and shes sharing fromher work. Hello everyone. Im so happy to be joining the southern book festival. I wish that we were all in person at on this particular panel in case anybody scratching their head about what a journalist from kansas is joining the discourse, ive written a book about certainly one of the most famous voices of appalachia being dolly parton ill get to that quickly but first i want to say that in case anyone joining in my first car which cannot years ago and is kind of a hybrid of memoir and social critique of the us history on socioeconomic class, you might remember my grandmother betty hears the star of her book, and in her house right now in this workingclass new wichita and my right next door to some good kansas homeowners if you are going off for my presentation since i tend to write about the working class and working poor of this country but my new book, she come by natural, dolly parton and the women who her songs which is from scrivner i wanted to mention, comes out officially ontuesday. And im excited to tell you a little about. I mentioned my first book heartland. Is in many ways an obvious integration of the work ive been doing as a journalist for a long time with my personal vantage as someone who grew up on a small wheat farm in southern kansas. A book about dolly parton you might pause and ask why and why would this be the followup . Most important way i can introduce the text to you is to give you context as to why it exists. Im certainly not a celebrity liar. I dont cover Popular Culture so to speak. I do write about class and sometimes how they intersect with all other aspects of identity including race, gender and so on. And in 2016, you might remember that was an election year. That had some repercussions in this country and it was a quite contentious time for this very polarized political moment were experiencing and every headline i saw about the place i come from, if you want to speak in general terms my people, the rural white folks basically, every headline was quite negative and quite bleak it seemed to be about eight, bigotry, and aspect of that population or telegraph but i happen to know as someone who is been very fortunate in my life as a firstgeneration College Student who went on to study in the ivy league and the fortunate to intersect with some pretty rarefied spaces, i knew firsthand like that exist in every run of the class letter among white folks specifically and so those headlines kind of bugged me in a personal way i guess and i wrote a little bit of media criticism and as one of the few with that particular lensnational media. That same year dolly parton had a new album out for the first time in years and was touring, putting on these huge arenashows for the first time in a long time. I can see how the energy coalescing around that, first of all all of a sudden my friends and i live in rural kansas today and spent most of my life in kansas but most of my industry is centered in new york that a lot of good friends there. Ive seen them on twitter about the and i like what you knowabout dolly parton . I knew she was a huge icon. I didnt understand the extent to which maybe not busted the extent to which shes not just a Creative Genius and now an icon of Popular Culture also just an incredible unifying figure in a very rare and notable way in climate such as today. So i was intrigued by this and i started thinking on and it occurred to me you know what, that that role specifically, rural lake white replaced i come from, theres always headlines about the worsening. Art dolly parton doesnt represent an estimate so that got me thinking. Theres also a lot going on that year about gender with horse lori clinton at the democratic president ial candidate and there was a lot of misogyny in the air. Year, regardless of your politics is an objective fact. It occurred to me, this is right before the dawn of the Media Movement and i was thinking you know, theres something about feminism right now that i feel like no one has articulated. At least in a mainstream way out there. That is what i would call workingclass and is. Thats what i was raised on. Thats what i was raised by and what i mean by that is is not theory. Its not exclusive in his language. It might not be even articulated or expressed in an over way it is a limit organically and so it occurred to me, Country Music written by women i was raised on his butt what the formative feminist text of my life that i was training to the year 2016 all the ways that year was defending the intersections of class gender. I was working on heartland at the time. My memoir that came a couple years later and so i was plenty busy. But great magazine called no depression if there are any Country Music fans out there that might follow it, its a long time location roots music avenue fellowship is the way in which that genre talks to her influences society and culture in a broader way. I thoughtoverweight, i want to write about how dolly parton relates to is. I got the. And so i was writing what ultimately became this book. Moments several years ago it was realized no depression magazine principally we. So probably a fairly small leadership now we find ourselves in an election year, another moment, no less divisive and certainly no less problematic in terms of class and gender out happily now that text is now in the form so im going to read you just a smidge front. And i want to add my way while im finding my place here that i wasnt raised as some sort of dolly parton super fan by any means. I was just a kid in the 80s and for anyone who was in that decade, she was just sort of woven into the fabric of Popular Culture. Shes here on talkshow, he has her music on the radio. She was starting in blockbuster movies. She actually i think as really enough if i can about the mantle of attempting to do justice to her life and career in thisbook , start or for hollywood roll 9 to 5. The year that i was born 1980. So in some ways this book is really a gesture of gratitude to women of her generation. Not least of whom being my grandmother betty who i mentioned a few minutesago. Im about her struggles in i sort of resource into the this memoir. I take the focus off of my book i wanted to provide context as to why i get this in a particular way. And that context has everything to do with my grandma who raised me and who was born just my five months apart from dolly parton and i kind of put forth in the book that in some ways she and women like her are the real ali parton by which i mean the stories that she felt her career on which are very much about hard knocks and specifically hard luck lives as women. Dolly parton left her families in east tennessee at about age 18 so she had been rich and famous a lot longer than shewas for. Near pigeon for it. But she had continued to tell the stories of the sort of women that raised me and who i believe genuinely, we a debt of gratitude in a way that feminist movements proper perhaps hasnt afforded so leaving home. Partons career off the same moment the Womens Liberation Movement the , providing a contrast between feminism and the concept feminism and money in the world. Like most women, parton knew little of theformer but excelled at the latter. A fragile state in Popular Culture in the early 70s. When she left tennessee was 1964, a president ial election year. This is a recurring theme, the interplay between figures like dolly and political realities. The country was torn by political uprising and tragedy. Dead men were returning from vietnam in caskets and president john f. Kennedy had been assassinated less than a year prior. In the 1994 autobiography, dolly parton recalled hearing news of his death over her boyfriends car radio while in route to perform on a radio show during a school break. Quote, i had loved john kennedy in the way one idealist recognizes another and loves him for that place within themselves that they share, she wrote. I didnt know a lot about politics but i knew a lot of things wrong and unjust and kennedy wanted to change them. Her boyfriend responded to the announcement by referring to kennedy with a racist epithet basically, relating to his stances on people of color. She promptly dumped him. The Womens Liberation Movement of the 60s and 70s had not yet reached fever pitch. Kennedy reared a commission on the status of women with a National Organization for women yet didnt exist. Strict conformance gender roles dont trap females of all socioeconomic classes as wives, mothers and secondclass citizens. When she stepped off the bus in nashville, some of that movement foundational texts were yet to be published but they likely would not it reached her in here. The women of her lot were too busy feeding hungry mouths come some for the isolated from discourse in the preinternet world place to reach such literature written in the form of english they didnt speak anyway. The reason i end up writing stuff like this by the way is when i tell folks sometimes when i give talks, i speak two versions of english, country and fancy. Country is my first time, and i think she has quite intentionally stayed true to that voice come regardless of what space shes moving through, regardless of whether she is supposed to kill ashamed about it and thats very strategic and intentional, and has worked out well for her, of course. She was living feminism without reading it. Leaving home alone as woman with professional aspirations and the financial means demonstrated she want a better life and thought she deserved it, though no model existed for the journey ahead for own imagination. Meanwhile, the place where she pursued, the recording capital of Country Music, couldnt have been a more harrowing gotland for a woman. Even if america had by then put a few small cracks in the ceiling that help women down, nashville was squarely situated under the thickness class. And ill leave it there. Look forward to questions at the end. Thank you so much, sarah. I wanted to remind everybody, sarah smarsh is the author of she come by it natural out tuesday from scribner. Weve already heard from dr. Thomas burton. Hes the author of voices worth the listening, three women of appalachia, out from university press. As our final speaker we were going to hear from Wayne Winkler who is the author of beyond the sunset, the melungeon outdoor drama, 19691976 out now from Mercer University press. As a bit of a tidbit wayne and i actually distantly related. I am a descendent of a collins. All right. So were cousins. Good to have you here, because. I would like to thank you for having here at the southern festival of books. Its a real honor, and thank you very much for inviting me. People may be wondering who the melungeons are. They are not the most wellknown group of people in the world but they are a group of mixed race people who are first documented in the northeast tennessee southwest virginia region about the beginning of the 19th century here in the 1990s as the internet became more widely accessible to ordinary people, the melungeons underwent a resurrection of interest mainly through the work of doctor Brent Kennedy who wrote a book entitled the melungeons come the resurrection of a proud people. And i was proud to go to work with dr. Kennedy and a fortunately he passed away about three weeks ago i kind of want to dedicate a bit of this to him. The reason the melungeons really became wellknown is i think the topic of the book and its what i wanted to write about because it wasnt a really wellknown episode in history. It was a very brief run for this particular outdoor drama, just from 19691976, but it represented a lot and only part of that was representing the melungeons and their image to the world. A lot of it had to do with trying to make Hancock County a more viable place to live. I would like to read just a little bit of the Second Chapter which i think sets up the situation pretty well. All Charlie Turner wanted was a road. Not even new road come just to fix up the one they had. With such a much to ask . Charles turner was the mayor of the county seat of Hancock County and a tiny town waits between the river in new and ridge. The feature was a courthouse run by a logo for men set, old cigarettes, gossip and watch a look at a traffic along main street because the government buildings with eus post office, a red brick building, couple blocks east of the courthouse on main street in the Hancock County jail 100yearold twostory wooden structure one block west and south of the courthouse on jail street. I know that to school and high school were also within the town limits. Since taking office in 1961 1961 turner had been trying to get the state, the federal government estimate to improve the road to morris down. Morristown was only 23 miles away but the trip was mostly a long state highway 31. Highway 31 ray between the towns. Turn right to go west on u. S. 11 and then a left turn south on 25 east into more stem. Morristown was where the jobs were. Most of the people who work at a job come made a a living by mes other than farming health jobs in morristown working one of the small factories lumberyard or one of the other bluecollar jobs to be found there. Morristown at just over 20,000 people so the 19,000 or so living in surrounding hamblen county. Only 874 people live in sneedville. Only 6719 people in all of Hancock County. Without morris down it would be practically no work for the people of Hancock County. The problem was the road. Highway 31. Over the mountain which is technically along ridge incorporating several summits. The people who drove highway 31 every day do every twist and turn of the road. In good weather they had no problem negotiating the route day or night, but a half inches no change the situation considerably. Snow didnt fall often in northeast tennessee but you could count on at least three or four good snows in the winter and about signup that snow stuck on the road near the top even if it didnt stick down envelope. If the road became icy or slip from heavy rain, the mountain was a forbidding obstacle for even the most experienced drivers. It could gertie the last few months of your life would be exciting indeed. Because of the mountain and state highway 31, there were elected to high people from sneedville or Hancock County. They were good workers, good people but if the weather turned bad even just a little bit bad, most of those good people were not going with the drive to show up at work. A good snow can keep them away for a week, maybe more dependent on when the state road crews finally got 31 clear enough to drive. It helped if you told a prospective employer that if you got the job you are planning to move to morristown but it wasnt only jobs that two people out of Hancock County. Living in morristown meant you could shop for groceries in a real supermarket instead of one of the dozens of tiny Country Stores that serve Hancock County. You could go to a movie once in a while, a current movie not like the winds at the sneedville you to pick you to take your wife to a nice restaurant and your kids could go to a better school, one that could pay for better teachers and give your kids a better chance of learning a trade or even going to college. In morristown you could make a better life for yourself and your family. Charlie turner was well acquainted with the desire to move somewhere with more opportunity. Years later he would tell report from up north my whole High School Graduation class left but i just said ill be darned if i do that, ill just run for mayor and see what i can do. When he was just starting out he taught in a oneroom schoolhouse. Schoolhouse. Later he opened a drugstore. He wasnt a pharmacist like most people who grew up in small tent drug stores but he still did well. When pitted drugstore business he could handle was developing photographs. He was a skilled photographer and it won several awards. Eventually ran for mayor of sneedville. Hancock county was almost totally republican but charlie was a democrat and the only democrat in his family. Still he won the election and the one after that and the one after that. Charlie turner stayed in snead phil on its own terms and made it work but he knew what unusual his decision was. It was a saying, from Hancock County residents, a lot of smart people come out of Hancock County. The smarter they are the quicker they come out. Most people are smart and ambitious as Charlie Turner got out of Hancock County sooner or later. The folks who left Hancock County for morristown were not really gone not really. It was still connected to the ones who lived in morristown or nearby refer to Hancock County as over home, as in are you going over home this weekend . Mommy and daddy still lives on the old family farm. Brothers and sisters, aunts and uncles cousins and old friends are still over home and you could be there or visit in less than an hour most days. Some folks are moved more stem were still very involved in life over home. Some still attended church with regard to sunday school and got baptized. Some were even involved in Hancock County government. When folks moved to morristown to reduce the population, and the tax base of county and made it hard to provide services to the ones who remained. Many people moved farther away than morristown. The whole colony transplant Hancock County folks lived in or near baltimore during world war ii by good paying jobs Like Shipyards and defense plans. Even more had moved north to indiana, ohio and michigan taking factory jobs with union paychecks, making more money than was possible even in morristown. They still came up sometimes most of them maybe two or three times a year when the kids got a vacation from school. They are load up the family car and head south down home to interstate 75, the hillbilly highway, was slowly being built across kentucky and nearly every time these transplanted Hancock County folks give them a little on the trip was made on a fourlane divided road. The transplants of different method been gone a while protective at attitudes, some of them stopped going to church or were going to different kind of church from the one they had grown up in. They had become more cosmopolitan. Folks at home felt the transplants look down on them. Their kids at midwestern accent and they had tales of life and big city. As time went on and kids got older and busier most families made the trip back oh less often. Pretty soon they would come back oh only for funerals. There were not part of the county anymore. They were gone. By 1969 Hancock County had fewer people that had 1869. The population had peaked in 1941 census figures for that year showed 11,231 souls in the county. The 1960 census census counted only 7757, a population loss of almost 31 in 20 years. Since 1960, charlie guest, at least 1000 more had a thousand more had left the county. The birthrate couldnt keep up with the number of people leaving for better job opportunities. As mayor of sneedville charlie has helped attract new jobs to the county seat. The voters have almost unanimously approved a bond issue to develop an industrial park. Senator albert moore felt the county land a 90,000 grant from the federal Economic Development administration to further develop the property. That would bring his biggest 135 new jobs into the county. Eventually. Improving highway 31 was crucial. That road was a lifeline for Hancock County. If the road is a dangerous people could commute to work in morristown and remain in Hancock County. There were only really four waste in and out of Hancock County, five if you count a state highway 66, but highway 33 was the important one. None of these highways were as important to sneedville and Hancock County and state highway 31, and tries he might Charlie Turner had not been able to get that road improved. But now, now he could see a chance. If no one would build a road for people going out of sneedville maybe it would build a vote for people coming in. I kept the windows, turner had his doubts about the etiquette of an outdoor drama. Still those professors from carson and called just that it becomes Economic Situation and told county leaders their best chance of Economic Development was tourism in the best chance of developing tourism was with an outdoor drama. Outdoor dramas were popular and attracted attractive tourist even to smaller towns like durham, north carolina, had been staging whole or in the west since 1952, the third oldest outdoor drama in the nation. But boone was a College Town Home at appalachian State University and had a direct highway connection to winstonsalem and the interstate i40. Trail of the lonesome pines 45 miles from sneedville was a longish one outdoor drama in the commonwealth of virginia. Fixed on campus to stop euros 23 a major highway that ran from jacksonville, florida, to mackinaw city, michigan. Until these indian reservation on the eastern edge of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park and the park to millions of visitors each year. Sneedville wasnt close to anything, no major highways or tourist attractions. Turned and other leaders were counted on the outdoor drama to entice tourists across the mountain into account the lack any of the usual amenities for torres like restaurant or motels. It serves good food, very good food as medevac but the exterior of the restaurant looked rough and the interior wasnt much better. The town motel, that was just five little rooms over the beauty parler on main street. Up to now that have been plenty. Not many folks came to sneedville needing a motel room but if the tour risking the restaurants or motels might follow. That was the hope anyway. Charlie turner and other leaders of Hancock County were counting on the subject of the place to talk to a rest but it was a subject of the plate that it been so controversial. Melungeons were not a topic. Even the word melungeon was that use spoken in public and no one in the county wanted to be identified as a melungeon. Everyone had been upset from the saturday evening post article came out. The melungeons were hancock counties dirty little secret. Times are changing so and people were starting to seep melungeons in in a different light. Those articles in the nashville tennessean had not been as negative as the post article. There will were more or less positive articles in various newspapers and magazines and that new novel by jesse stuart daughter of the legend was very sympathetic to the melungeons. People are curious about the melungeons and as the reverend condit for that is Hancock County take advantage of that curiosity some of the place would and would reap the benefits. If the melungeons were hancock counties been shot at attracting tourists than the people of the sneedville are going to give it a try. Even if hardly anyone in the county admitted to being a melungeon. As thursday, july, 1969 don in sneedville charlie turn had a lot of work to do. It was going to be and distort Independence Day weekend. For the first time tour rest were going to arrive in sneedville, tennessee. Thank you very much. Thank you so much, Wayne Winkler here and as a reminder, Wayne Winkler is the author of beyond the sunset, out from Mercer University press. We have about eight minutes left to answer any questions that you all may have for our panelists. If you would like to, please join us in either the app or on our Facebook Live stream or youtube comments. One of our southern humanity, southern festival of books Staff Members will be monitoring for any questions that you may have. I i guess i will start us off while we are waiting for people to join us. All of you spoke a little bit about, and i wrote this down from dr. Burton, one of the women in his book said its really hard to walk away from a person. I think that is kind of a conversation we are having a special in these rural places now about walking away from people or places or economic opportunities. Infamously, mr. J. D. Vance said in his book hillbilly elegy that these Rural Regions were experiencing brain drain. Could you talk a little bit about what your research or your writing has uncovered about people moving away from these communities . Well, the person go ahead. I was going to say i actually, about a year ago, wrote an opinion piece for the New York Times the headline for which had included the phrase brain gain pic i think i might be equipped to comment on this briefly. Entrance of quantitative measures about which direction the population is flowing in that proverbial rural or urban divide which of course is not a dichotomy, it has many more shades and to, but two, but numbers are certain show that some of these communities that are sort of pat referred to as dying or dwindling are actually gaining in some interesting ways. A lot of that has to do with racial demographic shifts, places like western kansas where there is a robust industrial meat packing industry are seeing large increases specific and hispanic and other immigrant populations. But even apart from race i have seen a sort of trend of a return, if you will, Wendell Berry the great kentucky writer and thinker refer to these folks as home comers. I think the term was coined by kansas named west jackson who is a friend of window. This is something that i feel like a toy thus far at a kind of qualitative experience for those of us who live in rural areas care about them are resisting the narratives about they are all ghost towns. I know people who could if they chose to live in new york or other places and their choosing to specifically return to rural spaces that they used to live. They are highly formally educated so i do think theres something shifting in our culture about like what is and isnt cool. As far as whats tenable economically thats another story and evolves getting broadband into those places and so on. It might not surprise all if you read my writing to know that i disagree with the j. D. Vance on both things. I was going to address that situation. Your question in a way about moving out doesnt, isnt as appropriate to this area that i was talking about, or these women were from, central appalachia. They are a part of the central pockets of poverty. Now, one of the women, black women, her life began in poverty. She started out when she was born, her mother was living in various places and one of them was with a friend. Finally they got a place of their own and it was infested with rats, and she thought it was horrible and hated it. Finally they got into the project, and that was a good place for her because she had a clean house, clean room and so forth. Instead of moving out someplace to find a better place, she started working as a very young person, as she worked every summer, for example, when she was in high school. Then in Senior High School she worked even from 3 00 at night until 11 00 and then went to school the next day, and capped a 3. 5 average. Shes kind of a excess story and capped she goes out and works even though her boyfriend has become her husband, its a drug addict for 14 years or so. She gets a job. She thinks she would go to a college, a business college. She got a degree in medical assistantship, and work to there. Then she from there to go to the university, got a University Degree and became a nurse. She still working as a nurse without leaving. The first woman that i read from, she was a hard worker but she had problems with even transportation getting to work. The situation was not good for her. She couldnt keep her job because she couldnt get to it, and she got her son to give her transportation and so forth. Finally she did move out and went to virginia beach, i believe. So i think its a different situation, and the circumstances for the women i was talking about. These women who are living these lives, that are very difficult out of the mainstream, but its not within a povertystricken place that they are trying to get away from. Thank you so much, dr. Burton. We have about a minute left, so i would once again like to remind you guys that the link to purchase these books, voices worth the listening , she, by natural she come by it natural, and beyond the sunset, the links to purchase those are in our chat. As a reminder please donate to humanities tennessee to allow this to remain a free event. Thank you all so much for joining me. Thank you very much. Thank you. You are watching booktv cspan2 every weekend with the latest nonfiction books and authors. Booktv cspan2 created by americas cableTelevision Companies. Today we are brought to you today by these Television Companies who provide booktv to viewers as a public service. The American Enterprise institute in washington, d. C. Hosted a Virtual Event with former second Lady Lynne Cheney who discussed four of the first five president s who all hailed from virginia. Here she weighs in on the debate over the removal of statues of americas founders who owned slaves. I am not opposed to taking down the confederate soldiers, the confederate leaders. They were traitors to the union, and i think that to take those statues down is fine, but i do, i mean, i am appalled actually when statues of washington fall or when the d. C. Government has a commission that suggests that if we dont start explaining the Washington Monument and Jefferson Memorial better, then maybe they should be moved to some other place. I cant do this because those statues and thus monuments are on private land. But i am appalled at this, and they were slaveholders. They knew slaveholding was wrong. Jefferson i think called it a stain on virginia, and others spoke of it as a moral sin. And jefferson called it a sin against god. So they were fully aware of the dilemma in which they lived, the contradiction in which they existed, but they found themselves unable, the circumstances were not such that they could achieve the full emancipation that justice demanded. That didnt stop them once they understood what a unique place they were in, what a unique time they were in. They were all educated in the enlightenment, and the scottish enlightenment. The ideas of freedom and liberty and justice and equality, they were central to the scottish enlightenment and they were all, well, washington educated himself but the other three went to find schools. So they were perfectly ready to start a new nation based on the very highest principles, and thats what they did. You are right, dick, it is a contradiction, but but i sure m glad they did it. To watch the rest of this Program Visit our website booktv. Org, use search box to look for lynching or the title of a book the virginia dynasty. Welcome everyone. I am karen greenberg, direct to sit on National Security at fordham law and welcome to todays event on the book im going to show you, homegrown isis in america. Before we get started today i want to mention some sad news. In the world at the center on National Security, my world, frank meade who is a longtime friend, advocate and advise the Senate Passed away on november 1 of this year and were going to miss him and