Writing Black Life in Mountains: Race and Representation in an Emerging American Literary Field

Harrison, Anthony Kwame

Writing Black Life in Mountains: Race and Representation in an Emerging American Literary Field

dc.contributor.author	Harrison, Anthony Kwame	en
dc.date.accessioned	2025-02-21T14:49:21Z	en
dc.date.available	2025-02-21T14:49:21Z	en
dc.date.issued	2025-01-30	en
dc.description.abstract	In this article, I explore the emergence of a developing literary tradition focusing on African Americans living in mountainous regions. In doing this, I discuss the appearance of the term “Affrilachian”—combining African (American) and Appalachian—as a distinct Black American mountain identity. I additionally examine three post-1970s books, all written by African American authors in different decades, that illustrate important contours in the development of this literary field: David Bradley’s The Chaneysville Incident (1981); Henry Louis Gates Jr’s Colored People (1994); and Crystal Wilkerson’s The Birds of Opulence (2016). All three books present alternative visions of how Black people belong among mountains and negotiate the racist structures that have historically worked to deny their connection to them. In tracing the differences between the three books, I underscore a steady progression towards more liberatory and affective attachments to land. Ultimately, I argue that the emergence of this new literary tradition, centering Black mountain life, both affirms and advances African Americans’ longstanding connections to mountains, and opens up additional space for recognizing their contemporary place among them.	en
dc.description.version	Published version	en
dc.format.mimetype	application/pdf	en
dc.identifier.doi	https://doi.org/10.4000/139ts	en
dc.identifier.eissn	1760-7426	en
dc.identifier.issn	0035-1121	en
dc.identifier.issue	3	en
dc.identifier.uri	https://hdl.handle.net/10919/124676	en
dc.identifier.volume	112	en
dc.language.iso	en	en
dc.language.iso	fr	en
dc.publisher	Institut de Géographie Alpine	en
dc.rights	Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International	en
dc.rights.uri	http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/	en
dc.subject	Mountains	en
dc.subject	Black Americans	en
dc.subject	Literature	en
dc.subject	Representation	en
dc.subject	Appalachia	en
dc.title	Writing Black Life in Mountains: Race and Representation in an Emerging American Literary Field	en
dc.title.serial	Revue de Geographie Alpine	en
dc.type	Article - Refereed	en
dc.type.dcmitype	Text	en
dc.type.other	Article	en
dcterms.dateAccepted	2024-10-02	en
pubs.organisational-group	Virginia Tech	en
pubs.organisational-group	Virginia Tech/All T&R Faculty	en
pubs.organisational-group	Virginia Tech/Liberal Arts and Human Sciences	en
pubs.organisational-group	Virginia Tech/Liberal Arts and Human Sciences/Sociology	en
pubs.organisational-group	Virginia Tech/Liberal Arts and Human Sciences/CLAHS T&R Faculty	en