Times were harsh


My cousin, Amy Clark, won an essay writing award earlier this month for a piece based on an oral history recorded in the mid-1980s of my grandmother, Emma Stanley Edwards, and her  sisters. Amy. an English professor, says the piece is part of a larger work she is tinkering with.

… Pop pounced on her sister like a rabid cat, slicing at her back with
muscled hands. Emma sprinted back to the house, screaming for her older
sisters and brothers. Nancy Jane’s sons heard the commotion and saw the
two women struggling up the lane. They wrangled Pop from their mother
and chased her straight into thick, untamed woods, which swallowed her
up.


Before it ended, Pop had stabbed Nancy Jane seventeen times,
with two wounds in her chest and the rest on her back.

Continue reading here.

If it had a soundtrack, it might be Darrrell Scott’s “You’ll Never Leave Harlan Alive,” which is set across the state line in Kentucky.

 

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