My Appalachia: A Memoir

by Sidney Saylor Farr

"My family lived as far back in the hollers as it was possible to go in Bell County, Kentucky. Dad worked in the timber woods and at a sawmill, when there was employment to be found. We ate what we grew on the place or could glean from the hillsides. Just about everything was made by hand. We had little contact with people outside the region." Sidney Saylor Farr grew up in the mountains of southeastern Kentucky, the eldest of ten children.

Her devotion to her family led her to accept heavy responsibilities from a very young at three, she remembers being put in charge of her baby sister while her parents worked in the corn field. At the age of twelve, Farr was forced to leave school to care for her ailing mother and younger siblings. Although she did not often have time to pursue her own goals, life in the mountains nourished and shaped Farr and the writer she would become. Her great-grandmother was a master storyteller, and stories passed down from generation to generation helped define her family history and fueled her imagination. Her Aunt Dellie, a voracious reader, received discarded books from the Pineville library, and as she shared these volumes with young Sidney, she opened the world to her eager niece.

Farr's intense determination compelled her to find her own path and gave her the strength to become one of the most influential figures in Appalachian letters, nurturing other young writers who wanted to document the region's particular way of life. Although living in Appalachia was difficult―many people of Farr's generation left the mountains for good―she persisted through countless challenges, including poverty, discrimination, and personal loss. Farr managed to thrive despite these adversities, educating herself, raising two sons, and becoming a voice for her family, community, and culture.

In My Appalachia , Farr shares the stories of her struggles and triumphs to create a vivid picture of a culture as enduring as the mountains. Composed of a rich mix of folklore, family history, and spiritual and intellectual exploration, Farr's deft and gentle storytelling reveals the beauty of life in Appalachia.

Genres: History, Biography, Memoir

272 pages, Hardcover

First published October 5, 2007

Reviews

[Vicki · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved this book! I need to read it again.

[Joan Colby · Rating 4 out of 5]

This begins as a typical memoir with much interesting data of life in the Appalachians in the first half of the 20th century. Much is from the child’s point of view. While life is primitive, the large close family had many good times. Descriptions of farming, food and pastimes are engaging, if sometimes overly nostalgic. The author was married at 15 to an older abusive man; she pursued a correspondence education to get a high school diploma. Life was hard, the couple adopted the illegitimate son of a relative and much later, the author had a son through an affair which her husband suspected, but he raised the boy as his own. Their marriage never improved and eventually they divorced Saylor Farr is candid about her need for affection. She retains many superstitions of the mountain people even as she continued her education and began to write and publish in the Kentucky community of Berea. Next, she married a much younger bi-sexual man and they were happy for a number of years, before he left her for another man. She had been accepting of his conflicted sexuality, but ultimately he distanced himself. I give her a lot of credit for her honesty, though sometimes it’s apparent to the reader that she continued to fall prey to unsophisticated ideas, i.e. that holiness snake handlers can be safe if their belief is strong, or the prophecies of Edgar Cayce or rather simplistic notions of spirits and ghosts. Saylor Farr works in the mountain community and in Berea College and advanced beyond the circumscribed world of her childhood which seems nothing like the meth-infested poverty stricken Appalachia of today. Her descriptions of the self-sufficiency of people of her parent’s generation—how they managed to live off the stony hilly land, putting in gardens, the men hunting, raising hogs and chickens, utilizing every single element they had to sustain life are quite fascinating. She does point out that the mainstay of the mountain people was moonshine—their only valuable cash crop, and the reader suspects that many of the “haunts” and “strange noises’ and “ghostly apparitions” that men report as they wend their way home from a night’s hunting was likely fueled by imbibing the product of their stills

[Becki Basley · Rating 5 out of 5]

My Appalachia: a memoir by Sidney Saylor Farr (Ebook read on the Everand App)


Sidney Farr grew up in my folks would call the backwoods of Kentucky. Life was tough, responsibility started early , and everyone worked for what little the family had. However, the land is beautiful and families really did look after each other.

These values were ingrained in the author and served her well through all her life. She ultimately has come a voice from the hills, someone who tells you about life in the backwoods and why even though it was challenging, she loves it so much. Very beautiful book.. I actually would like to read her other books.

[Diane Cross · Rating 3 out of 5]

First half good, second half boring

Going by the title, I really expected the whole book to be about living in the mountains but it was only about half of it. Then the rest was about her life and accomplishments after leaving the mountains. Some people might enjoy that but I found it extremely boring. I bought the book because I enjoy reading about Appalachian living so I felt kind of cheated.

Plus there was a whole bunch of new age spiritual stuff that I didn't like at all. I'm really not into reincarnation and stuff like that.

[Lindsey · Rating 2 out of 5]

Very choppy and all over the place. The details about her childhood and the way of life was fascinating, but she jumped from year to year and then forward ten years and then back twenty years— made for a very non linear and therefore confusing reading experience.

[Beth Jerkins · Rating 3 out of 5]

One third of the book is as titled.

First third was okay. The second half I kept waiting to connect back to the Appalachian connection. The last third was like a bad LSD trip.

[Terri · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book was not what I expected. With that title, I thought it would be about Farr's memories of growing up in Appalachia. And there were elements of that, which I enjoyed very much, having grown up in West Virginia. However, I was not expecting the personal revelations from her adult life - her abusive first husband and homosexual second husband, plus a lot about her various religious experiences. Several of the storylines appeared repeatedly, which led me to believe that individual chapters may have originally been written and published separately, then put together to create this book. A little editing would have gone a long way to make this book more readable. But, to give Farr credit, she writes candidly and from the heart, and it's interesting to read how she overcame so many obstacles to achieve the life she has today.

[Sandee · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved this book...told from stories about her childhood, family, and the traditions of people in the Appalachians. I have her cookbook, and enjoy it very much, especially for blackberry dumplings like my Mom used to make. It's in this book also. A fun read!