Power in the Blood: A Family Narrative (Race, Ethnicity and Gender in Appalachia) [Paperback]

Linda Tate (Author)

Book Description

Series: Race, Ethnicity and Gender in Appalachia | Publication Date: March 24, 2009

Power in the Blood: A Family Narrativetraces Linda Tate's journey to rediscover the Cherokee-Appalachian branch of her family and provides an unflinching examination of the poverty, discrimination, and family violence that marked their lives. In her search for the truth of her own past, Tate scoured archives, libraries, and courthouses throughout Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama, Illinois, and Missouri, visited numerous cemeteries, and combed through census records, marriage records, court cases, local histories, old maps, and photographs. As she began to locate distant relatives — fifth, sixth, seventh cousins, all descended from her great-greatgrandmother Louisiana — they gathered in kitchens and living rooms, held family reunions, and swapped stories. A past that had long been buried slowly came to light as family members shared the pieces of the family's tale that had been passed along to them.

Power in the Bloodis a dramatic family history that reads like a novel, as Tate's compelling narrative reveals one mystery after another. Innovative and groundbreaking in its approach to research and storytelling,Power in the Bloodshows that exploring a family story can enhance understanding of history, life, and culture and that honest examination of the past can lead to healing and liberation in the present.

Editorial Reviews

Review

“I think Power in the Blood is a remarkable memoir, honestly and beautifully written despite the painful nature of some of the material. This is a big, human, and entirely revelatory book: it shows us all just how these things can happen, and how they can continue to happen down through generations. Linda Tate doesn’t really lay blame or make judgments; she shows real wisdom and compassion throughout.“
Lee Smith

--This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

About the Author

Linda Tate is a faculty member in the University of Denver's Writing Program. She is the author ofA Southern Weave of Women: Fiction of the Contemporary Southand the editor ofConversations with Lee Smith. She taught at Shepherd University in West Virginia for fifteen years and now lives in Boulder, Colorado.

Product Details

• Paperback: 256 pages
• Publisher: Ohio University Press; 1 edition (March 24, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0821418726
• ISBN-13: 978-0821418727
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 5.9 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,386,725 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Formerly on the faculty of West Virginia's Shepherd University and the University of Denver's Writing Program, Linda Tate is an independent scholar, writer, and editor. Her books - A SOUTHERN WEAVE OF WOMEN: FICTION OF THE CONTEMPORARY SOUTH (University of Georgia Press), CONVERSATIONS WITH LEE SMITH (University Press of Mississippi), and POWER IN THE BLOOD: A FAMILY NARRATIVE (Ohio University Press) - highlight her expertise in Southern studies, Appalachian studies, and regional history and culture. A recipient of a Rockefeller Foundation Humanities Fellowship, Linda was named the 2003 West Virginia Professor of the Year. She lives in Boulder, Colorado, with her husband Jim.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars family history intrigues me, January 15, 2011

By 

luvugirl - See all my reviews

This review is from: Power in the Blood: A Family Narrative (Race, Ethnicity and Gender in Appalachia) (Paperback)

From the first paragraph, I wanted to get to know this narrator. Family history and the secrets that have such a strong influence on future generations were masterfully woven into this memoir/story of an extended family over time. I wanted it to keep going.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Page Turner and a Triumph, August 1, 2009

By 

Julene Bair "Plainswriter" (Longmont, Colorado) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Power in the Blood: A Family Narrative (Race, Ethnicity and Gender in Appalachia) (Paperback)

It's hard to tell your own, or your family's, story in a compelling way. The writer is interested, but how does she draw others in? No problem here. I could sense the emotional urgency from page one. The book opens back in Tate's graduate student days, when she first began to be consumed by the desire to find out about her grandmother and her past. Like many of us, she was coming from an imperfect childhood into adulthood. She had fond memories of her grandmother, who died when she was only four, but her father got grouchy any time she asked about her. That mixture, of both painful and pleasant memories, launches Linda on this amazing trek through the past, through books, library birth records, deeds, old newspapers. Graveyards. Everything. Throughout, that mixture of fond and difficult memories creates a compelling ambivalence that fuels this narrative as Tate tries to reconcile the two.

After her exhaustive research had uncovered everything that could be discovered about her Cherokee-Appalachian great-grandmother Lousiana and her grandmother Fannie in the conventional way, she recreated them in her imagination, giving them their own voices and letting them tell their own stories. It's a great literary accomplishment, inhabiting and recreating those individuals, bringing them to life.

Tate also brings to life this exotic lost world: "land between the rivers." This area between the Tennessee and Cumberland Rivers had since been dammed by the Tennessee Valley Authority. It is now a national recreation area known as Land Between the Lakes.

Probably the best thing a memoir or any book can do for us is cause us to reflect on our own lives. Reading about Tate's ancestors, steeped as they were in both nature's harshness and nature's gifts, opened my imagination as I thought about what it must have been like for my own grandmothers and great grandmothers to come west and settle the Kansas prairies. It was really the luck of the draw. Some got kind husbands, some did not. Whatever happened, they were stuck out there, like Tate's ancestors, in the wilderness together.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Power in the Blood, June 25, 2009

By 

D. Bowen (Placitas, NM United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Power in the Blood: A Family Narrative (Race, Ethnicity and Gender in Appalachia) (Paperback)

Linda Tate searches back into her family heritage to understand how her forebears' struggle with poverty and isolation colored her own life. Having grown up in the mountain south, much of this resonates with me as I think of my childhood friends. So many now are proud of their Cherokee ancestors (though this may be an arbitrary ethnic identity, since it may be the only Native American group which which they are familiar). It was a harsh reminder of the discrimination and greed which resulted in the Indian Removal Act of 1830, and a tribute to Linda's courage in facing difficult memories and moving on.