Join us this February and March for the inaugural 2023 Martin School DEI Book Club, featuring Gone Home: Race and Roots Through Appalachia, by Dr. Karida L. Brown, Professor of Sociology, Emory University. Those with LinkblueID can access the book free of charge from UK Libraries. Please see below for a description of Gone Home.
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Book Club Schedule of Events
Kick-off celebration | Monday, February 20th at 6:00 pm (Zoom) and Thursday, February 23rd at 3:30 pm (Appalachian Center, 624 Maxwelton Ct, Lexington, KY)
Discussion 1 | Week of February 27th (Zoom and in-person options) Discussion 2 | Week of March 20th (Zoom and in-person options)
TO SIGN UP | Please complete this form by Friday, Feb. 3rd - contact Dr. Jeongyoon Lee at Jeongyoon.Lee@uky.edu with any questions.
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We are also excited to share that Dr. Brown will visit the UK campus to discuss Gone Home on Thursday, March 30th at 5:00 pm in Kincaid Auditorium, Gatton College of Business and Economics. The event is free and open to the public.
Dr. Brown’s visit and the book club are made possible through the new Miriam Jane Van Dyke Barager Endowment for Diversity and Inclusion and through our generous co-sponsors the Appalachian Center; the Commonwealth Institute for Black Studies; the College of Agriculture, Food, and Environment Office of Diversity; the College of Arts & Sciences Department of Sociology; and the Graduate School.
Gone Home: Race and Roots Through Appalachia
Description from UNC Press: Since the 2016 presidential election, Americans have witnessed countless stories about Appalachia: its changing political leanings, its opioid crisis, its increasing joblessness, and its declining population. These stories, however, largely ignore black Appalachian lives. Karida L. Brown’s Gone Home offers a much-needed corrective to the current whitewashing of Appalachia. In telling the stories of African Americans living and working in Appalachian coal towns, Brown offers a sweeping look at race, identity, changes in politics and policy, and black migration in the region and beyond. Drawn from over 150 original oral history interviews with former and current residents of Harlan County, Kentucky, Brown shows that as the nation experienced enormous transformation from the pre- to the post-civil rights era, so too did black Americans. In reconstructing the life histories of black coal miners, Brown shows the mutable and shifting nature of collective identity, the struggles of labor and representation, and that Appalachia is far more diverse than you think.
~ UK Martin School DEI Committee: Caroline Weber (Chair), Cory Curl, Jeongyoon Lee, Adam Blevins, Jonnisa Ferguson, Blair Lozier, Zachary Owen, Dia Smith, Kayla Woodson