The Sixth Day of Lent

Dear George Ella,

We're not exactly best friends or anything, I realize. In fact, you probably wouldn't  even recognize my name without the story of my 5th grade class and their social activism against Mountain Top Removal in 2007-08.

 Before that school year, I had met you a couple of times at book signings and writing workshops.

I've been reading your books for the last 20 years, and some of my sweetest memories of my youngest son, Will, was reading Who Came Down That Road? every night for what seemed like months.  (He is certainly a creature of habit, even at 22 years old, but he also new good literature when he was a little boy.) Carly, Will's twin sister, took Come A Tide to bed with her during that same time.

Like you, I've been influenced by countless authors over the years, but you were the first "real" author that I ever met that proudly claimed Kentucky and eastern Kentucky, in particular, as home. The voice in your books actually sounded like people I loved. People that I was not as proud of as I should have been, until I met you.

Through your words, I learned that the stories of my family were to be honored and treasured, and that just because their accent and words might be different from mainstream literature, in reality, their uniqueness made them all the more interesting.

As a young woman, I learned to claim my heritage and culture, not deny it or belittle it, from you. I used to be ashamed of my roots, but now they are the greatest inheritance I can leave to my own children.

Thank you for being a voice for a group of people who are often forgotten. You have helped to preserve the traditions and experiences of Kentucky Appalachians by choosing their children as your audience in many of your books.

Thank you, too, for standing up for what is right, if not popular, in preserving the land and mountains that we are so blessed to claim as our own.

You will always have a place on my bookshelf. . . and my heart.

Angela Collins