Preparation for August 21 Discussion: The Bookwoman of Troublesome Creek, by Kim Michele Richardson

 

The Bookwoman of Troublesome Creek

by Kim Michele Richardson

Discussion Topics and Questions from Ken Miller

The Author

Kim Michele Richardson was born and raised in Kentucky, and still lives there and in North Carolina. The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek  draws on the author’s personal experience as well as the research that she conducted about the Pack Horse Library Project and the Blue People of Kentucky. She has written six books including this and its sequel, The Book Woman’s Daughter. She loves to infuse her love of Kentucky, the history, land, songs, and its people into all of her novels whenever possible. Along the way, she makes a point to contend with the state’s historical and social events, traditions, legends, and myths. She likes to write stories about people that are set in a landscape different from any other part of the world, and one she knows well. She believes that her familiarity and knowledge of this small part of the world helps to relate to people and understand herself better. She herself spent a good part of her childhood in a Catholic orphanage, then in a foster home, then homeless and on her own at age 14.

Historical Setting

The book focuses on one of the brave pack horse librarians who circulated books and magazines to the rural people of Appalachia during the Depression in the 1930’s and early 40’s. The Packhorse Librarian Project was one of F.D. Roosevelt’s New Deal initiatives, the WPA (Works Progress Administration). The purposes of the Packhorse Librarian Project were to provide employment for poor women (mostly) and to increase literacy and bring hope to areas of stark poverty.

The other historical topic centers on the Blue People of Kentucky who had a congenital condition called methemoglobulinemia  (met HE’mo glo bul iNE’mia) that affected the oxygenation of their blood resulting in their skin appearing blue, leading to their being considered “colored people” in the beliefs, fears, and even laws of Kentucky.

 

Discussion Topics:

1. How did the Packhorse Library Project affect different people in the Troublesome Creek remote area?
2. Who were some of your favorite characters? What attracted you about them?
3. Junia, Cussy’s mule, is an important character in the story. I couldn’t help but notice the similarities in character that the author gives to Junia and Cussy. Anybody agree with that? What character similarities did you see?
4. Was there a library or librarian that you recall as being significant at some period of your life?
5. Why was Cussy’s father so eager to marry off his daughter? What do you imagine life was like for an unwed woman at that time?
6. It seems that Cussy and the other “Blues” were not only the victims of prejudice in their own community, but even among the care-givers in Louisville. Beware the do-gooders?
7. A comment: The author deliberately singles out the nuns at St. Joseph Hospital for their harshness, lack of respect, even brutality. In the author’s published memoir she describes the cruel treatment of her and the other children in the orphanage run by nuns in which she was placed as a child. Perhaps this episode in this book is the author’s  little bit of getting even with the nuns of her childhood?
8. When Cussy receives a “cure” for her blueness from Doc, she realizes there’s a price to pay for her white skin. To be white or blue? What to do? The side effects of the medicine are too much. If there weren’t any side effects, do you think that Cussy would have taken the medicine? Would you?
9. Cussy has to deal with the loss of many loved ones in a very short amount of time. Their stories were emotionally hard to read. Which loss was the most difficult for you to read?
10. Queenie leaves the hills to make a new life in Philadelphia, and wants Cussy to join her. Why doesn’t Cussy leave the poor, violent, life-limiting hills and hollers of Troublesome Creek?
11. The School, its teacher Winnie Parker, little sickly Henry and his gift of a Lifesaver: Is the school a place of hope or despair?
12. R.C. lives and works in a fire tower erected by the Civilian Conservation Corps, another New Deal program to provide young men jobs, a place to live and learn in the program’s military style camps, to promote conservation, and  to create natural parks. Do any of you have any information about the impact of the CCC in Texas? If no one does, fear not; I do. My uncle from Ohio served in the CCC in Texas.
13. Jackson Lovett: I’m guessing that you saw the love story coming pretty early on in the book. Were you surprised by the ending?
14. Your reactions to the book: likes? dislikes?
15. What do you think happens to Cussy, Jackson, Honey and the other folks of Troublesome Creek. (Claudia knows the answer because she has read the sequel, The Book Woman’s Daughter.)
16. Just a thought: I’m betting that hearing the author’s native dialect might make listening to this book more clear and realistic than reading it.