Techniques in Appalachian Fiction: Dialect in Bloodroot by Amy Greene

In this series, I'm going to take a look at how dialect is rendered (or not rendered) in a handful of Appalachian novels. Today, I'm looking at Bloodroot by Amy Greene (2010). If you want to look at the other posts on this topic, click here for the whole series on Techniques in Appalachian Fiction.

This novel has a really interesting structure that's tied to point of view. Part one of the novel includes
very short chapters that oscillates between first person narration by Byrdie Lamb and Doug Cotter. Other characters come into the story after Part One, but I'm just going to look at the opening chapters for this post. I was going to look at it up to page 20, but I think there's enough there in the first two chapters (just 4 pages).

The opening lines of the first chapter set the characterization of Byrdie, who is Myra's grandmother. "Myra looks like her mama, but prettier because of her daddy mixed in. She got just the right amount of both." The phrase she got lets the reader know she doesn't have a strong formal education, but the first line lets us know that she's thoughtful. In her eyes, the dad makes Myra look prettier, which is different than what I would expect. I think this sets up Myra as a character who is thoughtful and looks at things differently than most people, which implies she is smart although her grammar isn't perfect.

Honestly, when I read the first 2-page chapter through initially, I was a little put off by the persistent problems with grammar:

• "I didn't see nothing wrong" (3)
• "I couldn't hear nothing else" (4)
• "Then I seen there was things" (4)
• "I should have knowed right then" (4)

The bad grammar threw me out of the story (maybe because I was looking for it specifically). But what drew me in was the colorful language that seems authentic to me: "that snake coiled up inside his heart" (3) and "I got tougher than a pine knot" (3).

In this opening chapter, Amy Greene does use the word reckon in the opening chapter. A professor once told me I shouldn't use reckon because it's derogatory and promotes a stereotype, but I think it's realistic - not for all characters, but maybe for one or two. For my dad, a simple, "I reckon" can mean any number of things depending on the situation and the look on his face and whether he looks you in the eye or stands up to leave as he says it. It can mean he's thoughtful - or he thinks you are wrong but doesn't really care to push it - or that you made him really upset and the conversation is over. I can't omit the words I reckon from my fiction - it's a fabulous phrase.

The sentence structure in Byrdie's section also conveys her education level (at this point I'm not sure of the year or time period for the novel). The sentences tend to be short, simple sentences. There's an occasional compound sentence with the comma missing. The language is simple. On the first page, the most complex word is "outcome."

However, by the end of this very short chapter, Byrdie tells about a dream she has that seems prophetic. "Then there was a crack and my foot went through the boards of that old bridge. It started coming apart, jagged pieces dropping and rushing away, until I was hanging on by a scrap of rotten wood, my feet dangling over the water."  The description of the dream is lovely and eloquent and makes me as a reader believe she is smart and perceptive. I can't wait to hear how she will describe the events that happen in the rest of the story.

In the second chapter, written in first person from Doug's point of view, there is no trace of any Appalachian or southern dialect. Every sentence is written with perfect grammar, and the sentences are more complex. In this brief chapter, Doug goes out to the barn to feed a horse that's in distress. He says his parents and brothers are in the house sleeping, so I have the impression he's a teenager or a young man.

The juxtaposition of Byrdie's narration with Doug's gives me the impression that huge generational differences will be presented in the story and that the syntax used in Byrdie's narration was strategic. I think it was used with the intent to expose the generational differences between these two characters, who tell the story only for the first 100 pages.

Without giving away the plot, both of these characters are connected to the supernatural. Byrdie has a prophetic dream, and her attitude toward it is that this force can't be controlled. Doug, on the other hand, decides to take action to try to calm the horse that's gone wild because Myra Lamb, Byrdie's granddaughter, is missing.

Have any of you used techniques similar to the ones Amy Greene uses in these opening chapters? Is any of this useful?


Work Cited:
Greene, Amy. Bloodroot. New York: Vintage Books, 2010. 3-6. Print.

New Series: Techniques in Appalachian Fiction

In an effort to breathe some life back into my blog and to force myself to set aside time to read in my genre, I signed up for an independent study course at my university. My goal for the class is to analyze and compare a few writing techniques in the very specific genre of the Appalachian novel.

I chose the following novels with publication dates spanning 26 years:

• Storming Heaven by Denise Giardina (1987)
• Fair and Tender Ladies by Lee Smith (1993)
• Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier (1994)
• Gap Creek by Robert Morgan (1999)
• Prodigal Summer by Barbara Kingsolver (2001)
• Bloodroot by Amy Greene (2010)
• Flight Behavior by Barbara Kingsolver (2013).

My initial plan was to write a blog post about at least one writing technique in the openings of each of these novels. But I think I'll do something a little different and bring you along for the ride.

In the first series of posts, I'm going to look at the opening chapter of each novel and examine how the author executed the very tricky technique of rendering dialect - both in the dialogue and in the narration. Characterization will necessarily be included in these discussions because narration and dialogue are techniques that are used to develop the characters. The tricky thing about this, which I struggle with in my writing, is developing realistic dialogue and first person narration while simultaneously not playing into or perpetuating regional stereotypes.

My family is Appalachian, all of them from as far back as I can trace. Most of them were sustenance farmers, which means they grew just enough to feed their families and kept whatever animals they needed to ensure their family's survival. Many of the men were coal miners. The families were huge with a baby born at a rate of about one per year, especially in the earliest generations, and each family lost a good percentage of the babies. I have reviewed more census records than I can count and learned that hardly anyone before my great grandparents' generation attended school or could read or write.

I want to honor my ancestors by realistically portraying fictional characters who lived in the same place. What I know of them is they were smart people despite the lack of traditional education; they survived under impossible circumstances. To portray them as anything else would be rude and disrespectful.

When I was a child in the 1970s, I spent some time in Phelps, Kentucky, with my grandparents. I remember how tickled my grandma was with all the hype about "hillbillies" (which I now realize is a a bad word, something never to say out loud). I remember going with my grandparents to a restaurant that had a sign on the table with a translation for "hillbilly" language, like a "poke" is a bag (if I remember that correctly). My grandma thought that was awesome and got a huge kick out of The Beverly Hillbillies. She thought it was so funny anyone would find Appalachians entertaining and didn't mind it at all. She didn't perceive any of it to be negative or condescending; I guess it's all a matter of perspective. I think even if she did perceive it to be rude, she would have turned the other cheek; that's just how she was.

Recently, I've read a huge amount of scholarship on the ways stereotypes have negatively impacted this region and its people. I tend to agree and choose not to contribute to the stereotypes.

One of the things I'm going to look at in my course (and in this series of posts) is whether the depiction of Appalachians in these novels changed over time and how that depiction was pulled off technically. By the end of the semester, I hope to have reached a decision about what techniques related to dialect and characterization I will use in my novels.

All of this is way too much for a short blog post, so I'll look at one novel at a time and maybe knit it together into a longer essay in the end. I might do a little profile on each of the authors too if anyone is interested.

Have any of you read any of these novels or other books from these authors? Anyone writing historical or regional fiction where dialect is an issue?



Tonja