I wanted to write a tale of tender love and loss, the importance of land, oppression of Appalachian women in the ’60s, and use a unique place. More than anything it was my hope to weave the theme of poverty’s oppression on women and portray the consequences. I do this with the four Stump girls, RubyLyn, and the rest of the women in the fictional town of Nameless, Kentucky. The girls’ actions show how the crushing poverty knows no gender, age, or boundaries, and how it becomes a scatterbomb, harming the person, the family, friends, and everyone in larger society—how it affects learning, choices, and notions of self-worth on life’s whole journey. And again, in GodPretty we visit racial strife and examine difficult history from this timely subject. We also look at the last public hanging that took place in Kentucky (Rainey Bethea, August 14, 1936, Owensboro, KY).
I hoped to explore Appalachia’s history, back to when President Johnson and the First Lady, Lady Bird, surprised the world and visited the tiny eastern Kentucky town Inez in 1964. Bearing witness right down to the hand-hewn porch of Tom Fletcher that Johnson squatted on, to the color of the First Lady’s coat, and to the reminder of the newly minted coin commemorating President Kennedy. I wanted the reader to feel that hope and loss through the eyes of a 10-year-old RubyLyn.
GodPretty in the Tobacco Field is rich with music. I love music, particularly the violin. Though I can’t play a lick, my daughter started playing strings when she was three, and my husband plays the clarinet and piano. And we have a set of simple hand-carved wooden musical spoons like those mentioned in the book.
The people of Appalachia are born to music, much of it still lost to time’s passing, and I pull some lost treasures into the novel like this one I found from the National Jukebox in the Library of Congress: “Sweet Kentucky Lady” (http://www.loc.gov/jukebox/recordings/detail/id/913).
Art is important to RubyLyn, and the papers she uses for her fortune-tellers are made from the pulp of the tobacco stalk and have her intricate drawings of pastoral scenes, portraits, and her fantasy cityscapes.
The land is a vital theme, too. It is how we live, breathe. When I was young, I worked in a tobacco field one summer. I hated it. Now my family and I grow vegetables and fruit on our small farm to give to the elderly. But last summer I grew a tiny patch of tobacco to visit that childhood setting again for my characters.
You’ll visit a State Fair in the novel, icons of summer and youth—and look at the Future Farmers of America club before it allowed female membership, the sweeping change it made in 1969, and the important role the youth organization has for our earth and our future farmers.
Making RubyLyn’s Fortune-Teller
The paper RubyLyn uses for her fortune-tellers is made from the pulp of the tobacco stalk. She draws intricate scenes of rural life, portraits, and fantasy cityscapes. But you don’t have to grow tobacco and produce your own pulp. You can have one by cutting out any piece of paper and following these simple instructions below. Decorate your fortune-teller any way you like.
To see other readers’ fortune-tellers like the ones RubyLyn makes, please visit my Facebook page and post your photos:
https://www.facebook.com/KimMicheleRichardson.
I am excited to see your works of art!
INSTRUCTIONS
1. Cut out square and fold over diagonally on both dotted lines.
2. Flatten paper and fold all four corners to the center and press in creases.
3. Unfold, flip paper over, and fold four corners to center dotted lines.
4. Fold vertically and then horizontally on dotted lines.
5. Slip thumbs and forefingers into slots.
A READING GROUP GUIDE
GODPRETTY IN THE
TOBACCO FIELD
Kim Michele Richardson
ABOUT THIS GUIDE
The suggested questions are included
to enhance your group’s reading of
Kim Michele Richardson’s
GodPretty in the Tobacco Field.
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
1. In April 1964, President Johnson surprised the small Appalachian town of Inez, Kentucky, and the world by declaring his historical War on Poverty. How did this program to feed, educate, and house the poor help or hinder the poverty-ridden towns? Fifty years later, why is this area still steeped in poverty?
2. Gunnar pushes his strict moral code onto RubyLyn and uses his coined phrase GodPretty to keep her in line. He insists she must not only toil in his tobacco field, but keep a “GodPretty” soul while doing so. Does Gunnar believe that RubyLyn must be pretty in the eyes of God in order for his home and crops and land to be blessed? What does GodPretty mean?
3. Discuss Rainey and RubyLyn’s relationship. Discuss marriages and relationships in the sixties and now.
4. How do you think the Labor Department’s 1960s “Happy Pappy” work program would do today if paid, on-the-job training was widely available?
5. Throughout history, extended families, clans, and tribes tended to allow marriage of relatives—sometimes out of necessity, sometimes out of convenience. In 1943, Kentucky banned first-cousin marriages. Today, “Twenty-five states prohibit marriages between first cousins. Six states allow first cousin marriage under certain circumstances, and North Carolina allows first cousin marriage but prohibits double-cousin marriage,” cited the National Conference of State Legislatures. Discuss.
6. As beautifully chronicled in Sharyn McCrumb’s novel, later made into a movie, The Songcatcher, the people of Appalachia are born to music, much of it still lost to time’s passing. I was fortunate enough to find the 1915 song “Sweet Kentucky Lady” and its original sheet music, along with many other treasures, and the recording on the Library of Congress Web site where they have painstakingly preserved more than 10,000 historical sound recordings for free on their online National Jukebox section. Listen to “Sweet Kentucky Lady” here: http://www.loc.gov/jukebox/recordings/detail/id/913. What items from your past deserve to be found again, preserved, and shared with younger generations and loved ones?
7. Thinking about the lives and actions of Ada, Baby Jane, Lena, and Henny and the rest of the women of Nameless, how does abject poverty affect learning, habits, choices, and notions of self-worth on life’s journey? Discuss crushing poverty’s oppression on women.
8. In 1958, Freddy (also known as Freddy Farm Bureau), the eighteen-foot wooden doll of the Kentucky State Fair, was introduced and still sits proudly on his bale of hay at the State Fair. Share your icons of events that have stuck with you.
9. For decades, Future Farmers of America was strictly a boys’ club. In 1969, Future Farmers of America allowed female membership. How do gender-based restrictions harm society? How does inclusion of all strengthen?
10. Discuss the Future Farmers of America creed.
11. We hardly think of the soil, oftentimes avoid treading in it, brushing it off when it sticks to us, yet it is the core of existence. Novelist, environmentalist, and farmer Wendell Berry says:
The soil is the great connector of lives, the source and destination of all. It is the healer and restorer and resurrector, by which disease passes into health, age into youth, death into life. Without proper care for it we can have no community, because without proper care for it we can have no life.
How we nurture the soil is how we live and survive. Discuss erosion—the earth, its climate, planting, our ways of farming, our ways of harming, today versus decades ago.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
KENSINGTON BOOKS are published by
Kensington Publishing Corp.
119 West 40th Street
New York, NY 10018
Copyright © 2016 by Kim Michele Richardson
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written c
onsent of the Publisher, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.
Kensington and the K logo Reg. U.S. Pat. & TM Off.
eISBN-13: 978-1-61773-736-7
eISBN-10: 1-61773-736-4
First Kensington Electronic Edition: May 2016
ISBN: 978-1-6177-3735-0
GodPretty in the Tobacco Field Page 27
