ABSTRACT

Being a Kentucky writer is for the author a question of upbringing and sensibility. Like all Kentucky folks who embraced the anarchist values of the backwoods, the author considered themselves an outsider even before they left homeplace. Like many outsiders engaged in the arts the author turned to the world of bohemian culture, of writers and artists to receive a new life map, a blueprint for how to be alternative hip, cool. The feminist movement with its focus on recovering women's history and telling women's stories was the social and political context where the demand that women reclaim the people individual and collective voice was linked to an appreciation for difference, for vernacular culture. Kentucky as the homeplace of the author mind and heart is both real and mythic, distinct from the concrete experience of living in the bluegrass state. Readers simply saw and see the people as writing about “southern” roots.