William H. Turner – författare

Chesapeake Boyhood is an account of growing up on the lower Eastern Shore of the Chesapeake during the years following the Great Depression. Turner's stories include rousing tales of 'coon hunting, crabbing, boat building, duck hunting, oyster tonging, and Saturday jaunts to town. Turner brings the characters, experiences, waterscape, and landscape of rural Virginia to life as no one has done before or is likely ever to do again. His own drawings illustrate the stories, and they, too, win us over with their honesty and charm. "Its chief virtue (besides its highly literate style), it seems to me, is its intimate, sensory knowledge of a vanishing Chesapeake landscape: its sounds and smells, the way things feel to the touch, the lore lodged in the names of the commonest creatures and activities ...At one point Turner likens the local farmers and fishermen sitting around the table in the country store to fixed positions on a compass, with 'all the cardinal points taken,' and I think of this [book] as a kind of compass too, that describes one man's orientation to the Eastern Shore."--Andrea Hammer, St.Mary's College "Modern outdoor writing has enough anemic adventures by faint-hearted writers reared in the suburbs. What it needs more of is the droll wit of an Ed Zern, the robust foolishness of a Patrick McManus, and the lean prose of an Ernest Hemingway. It gets all three in the tales of Bill Turner."--George Regier, author of Heron Hill Chronicle and Wanderer on My Native Shore "Storms, boat wrecks, childhood pranks and even old dogs are remembered with a sense of humor in Turner's book. He has captured the rhythms of country life in a time before fast cars, credit cards, and air pollution."-Waterman's Gazette

Although southern Appalachia is popularly seen as a purely white enclave, blacks have lived in the region from early times. Some hollows and coal camps are in fact almost exclusively black settlements. The selected readings in this new book offer the first comprehensive presentation of the black experience in Appalachia.Organized topically, the selections deal with the early history of blacks in the region, with studies of the black communities, with relations between blacks and whites, with blacks in coal mining, and with political issues. Also included are a section on oral accounts of black experiences and an analysis of black Appalachian demography. The contributors range from Carter Woodson and W. E. B. Du Bois to more recent scholars such as Theda Perdue and David A. Corbin. An introduction by the editors provides an overall context for the selections.Blacks in Appalachia focuses needed attention on a neglected area of Appalachian studies. It will be a valuable resource for students of Appalachia and of black history.

Although southern Appalachia is popularly seen as a purely white enclave, blacks have lived in the region from early times. Some hollows and coal camps are in fact almost exclusively black settlements. The selected readings in this new book offer the first comprehensive presentation of the black experience in Appalachia.Organized topically, the selections deal with the early history of blacks in the region, with studies of the black communities, with relations between blacks and whites, with blacks in coal mining, and with political issues. Also included are a section on oral accounts of black experiences and an analysis of black Appalachian demography. The contributors range from Carter Woodson and W. E. B. Du Bois to more recent scholars such as Theda Perdue and David A. Corbin. An introduction by the editors provides an overall context for the selections.Blacks in Appalachia focuses needed attention on a neglected area of Appalachian studies. It will be a valuable resource for students of Appalachia and of black history.

A personal remembrance from the preeminent chronicler of Black life in Appalachia.The Harlan Renaissance is an intimate remembrance of kinship and community in eastern Kentucky's coal towns written by one of the luminaries of Appalachian studies, William Turner. Turner reconstructs Black life in the company towns in and around Harlan County during coal's final postwar boom years, which built toward an enduring bust as the children of Black miners, like the author, left the region in search of better opportunities.The Harlan Renaissance invites readers into what might be an unfamiliar Appalachia: one studded by large and vibrant Black communities, where families took the pulse of the nation through magazines like Jet and Ebony and through the news that traveled within Black churches, schools, and restaurants. Difficult choices for the future were made as parents considered the unpredictable nature of Appalachia's economic realities alongside the unpredictable nature of a national movement toward civil rights.Unfolding through layers of sociological insight and oral history, The Harlan Renaissance centers the sympathetic perspectives and critical eye of a master narrator of Black life.

A personal remembrance from the preeminent chronicler of Black life in Appalachia.The Harlan Renaissance is an intimate remembrance of kinship and community in eastern Kentucky's coal towns written by one of the luminaries of Appalachian studies, William Turner. Turner reconstructs Black life in the company towns in and around Harlan County during coal's final postwar boom years, which built toward an enduring bust as the children of Black miners, like the author, left the region in search of better opportunities.The Harlan Renaissance invites readers into what might be an unfamiliar Appalachia: one studded by large and vibrant Black communities, where families took the pulse of the nation through magazines like Jet and Ebony and through the news that traveled within Black churches, schools, and restaurants. Difficult choices for the future were made as parents considered the unpredictable nature of Appalachia's economic realities alongside the unpredictable nature of a national movement toward civil rights.Unfolding through layers of sociological insight and oral history, The Harlan Renaissance centers the sympathetic perspectives and critical eye of a master narrator of Black life.