Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Seeing Inside The Mountains: Cynthia Rylant's Appalachian Literature And The "Hillbilly" Stereotype, Karen Roggenkamp

Faculty Publications

If Ob, as a West Virginia native, possesses the ability to see The Mysteries where others see only primitivistic whittling or, more pejoratively, tacky wooden trash cluttering the yards of mountain families, then Rylant's Appalachian works likewise depict characters who possess an ability to see beyond external markers and predictable interpretations, and who seek an emotional and spiritual interiority based on family, love, and sense of place. Rylant's words in The Relatives Came, When I Was Young in the Mountains, and Missing May work to restore the integrity of Appalachia as a place of "interior" values, a setting that symbolizes …