Jeff Biggers is the author of The United States of Appalachia, In Sardina, Trials of a Scourge, and many more. You've heard me discuss his work on the podcast, particularly in New England, where we visited the grave of Washington Irving, who first proposed that the country's name be changed from "America" to "Appalachia." Biggers' book, published 20 years ago, is a "re-storification" of Appalachia, as he puts it. He seeks to reveal the innovators in music, literature, resistance, and politics who are almost never associated with the region but were born and sometimes shaped here.

In this bonus episode, Jeff met with members of a class I teach at UVA-Wise, where he recounted meeting the great Don West as a 19-year-old hitchhiker. His education about Appalachia began with this meeting, when West started asking a series of questions with "Did you know....?"

Biggers didn't know any of what West told him about Appalachia, but that meeting made him question why he didn't know.

Did you know that Nina Simone, from Appalachian North Carolina, sang "Black is the Color of My True Love's Hair" in New York City? It was a mountain ballad she learned growing up.

Did you know the first woman to win the Nobel prize for literature was born in West Virginia?

Did you know the first abolitionist newspaper was founded in east Tennessee, where Rosa Parks trained in nonviolent protest four months before she refused to give up her seat on that bus?

Biggers discusses how his journey took him from Appalachia and across the world, most notably to Italy where he saw familiar themes in the way people from particular areas were perceived. The loss of his family's farm brought him back to Appalachia for a reckoning with what happens when land that is generations-old is erased.

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Unless another artist is featured, acoustic music on most episodes: "Freight Train" written by Elizabeth Cotten and performed by Landon Spain