How They Shine: Melungeon Characters in the Fiction of Appalachia

Katherine Vande Brake
The first critical study of Melungeon characters in fiction.

In How They Shine: Melungeon Characters in the Fiction of Appalachia, Vande Brake argues that fiction writers choose to create Melungeon characters, incorporate Melungeon lore, and replicate the Melungeon experience because Melungeon is such a powerful metaphor. Their use of Melungeons is not intended as an insult, but instead as a way to say more with less. Melungeon means mystery, unpredicatbility, isolation, prejudice, passion, volatility, superstition, pride. Melungeon means fiery moonshine “likker,” beautiful dark-skinned women, and handsome, reckless men. Melungeon conjures visions of independent life on Appalachian ridges, tongue-speaking preachers handling poisonous snakes, secluded log cabins with arched windows, and family genealogies complete with foreign-sounding names. Melungeon assumes exotic ethnic origins in the days before the English colonized North America.

How They Shine is the first book of its kind—a book about books with Melungeon characters. Its clear, readable presentation invites scholarly attention from a variety of disciplines, lay readers, residents of Appalachia, and readers who love good books that ask an interesting question: “Why would someone choose to write about Melungeons?”

Katherine Vande Brake is associate professor of English at King College in Bristol, Tennessee.

Also in the Series

The Melungeons: History, Culture, Ethnicity, and Literature
edited by N. Brent Kennedy
Under the expert direction of N. Brent Kennedy, the foremost writer and lecturer on the Melungeons, Mercer University Press is proud to introduce a new series devoted to research and explanation of an otherwise obscure American ethnic group.
Also in the series

• North from the Mountains: A Folk History of the Carmel Melungeon Settlement, Highland County, Ohio by John S. Kessler and Donald B. Ball

• From Anatolia to Appalachia: A Turkish-American Dialogue
edited by N. Brent Kennedy and Joseph M. Scolnick, Jr.

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Bibliography, Index