Another Appalachia
168 pages, 5 x 8
3 b-w images
Paperback
Release Date:01 Mar 2022
ISBN:9781952271427
GO TO CART

Another Appalachia

Coming Up Queer and Indian in a Mountain Place

West Virginia University Press
“Commands your attention from the first page to the last word.” —Morgan Jerkins
This book lives beautifully in the gray area of trying to navigate a divisive environment while growing up queer and Asian American.’Forbes ‘I’m glad this memoir exists . . . and I’m especially glad it’s so good.’
Vauhini Vara, New York Magazine

‘A graceful exploration of identity, community, and contradictions.’
Scalawag

‘A timely collection that begins to fill the gap in literature focused mainly on the white male experience.’
Ms. Magazine

‘Evocative and thought-provoking.’
Bitch Media

‘Compelling and refreshing. . . . Appalachia needs more people like Neema Avashia.’
Daily Yonder

‘Readers may be Indian, Appalachian, and queer or they may be some or none of these things. No matter—Avashia’s beautifully rendered prose contains insights to which everyone can relate.’
Still: The Journal

‘This book gave me such tenderness toward a place that parsing my thoughts about it was like scooping up tadpoles with my bare hands.’
Pittsburgh Institute for Nonprofit Journalism

Another Appalachia is a breath of fresh air, a work that the public is in dire need of reading. Wide and expansive as the land the author calls home, this essay collection subverts the mainstream’s hyperfocus on white male-dominated narratives from rural America and commands your attention from the first page to the last word.’
Morgan Jerkins, author of This Will Be My Undoing: Living at the Intersection of Black, Female, and Feminist in (White) America and Caul Baby

‘Neema Avashia, in this book, has named the unnamed, spoken the unspoken so that it does not become—to paraphrase Adrienne Rich—the unspeakable, and she has done so in language that is both lyrical and direct, both entertaining and edifying, both challenging and generous. I love this book and believe it introduces an important voice in America’s ongoing racial reckoning.’
Rahul Mehta, author of No Other World

‘An essential text to add to the new canon of Appalachian writing—a compassionate and rigorous memoir of the author’s experience growing up as a queer Hindu child and teenager in a small community of West Virginian Indians. Another Appalachia is a bright and deeply empathetic portrait of a complicated place, a place that Neema Avashia allows to be multifaceted in the way it deserves.’
Anna Claire Weber, White Whale Bookstore

Neema Avashia was born and raised in southern West Virginia to parents who immigrated to the United States. She has been a middle school teacher in the Boston Public Schools since 2003. Her essays have appeared in the Bitter SouthernerCatapultKenyon Review Online, and elsewhere.
Directions to a Vanishing Place
Chemical Bonds
Nine Forms of the Goddess
Be Like Wilt
The Blue-Red Divide
City Mouse/Country Mouse
Finding the Holy in an Unholy Coconut
Wine-Warmth
Magic Dust
A Hindu Hillbilly Elegy
Neighbors
The Hindu Hillbilly Spice Company
Shame-Shame
Our Armor
A History of Guns
Present-Life Hair
Only-Generation Appalachian
Thanks, Y’all
Find what you’re looking for...

Free shipping on online orders over $40

Stay Informed

Receive the latest UBC Press news, including events, catalogues, and announcements.


Read past newsletters

Publishers Represented
UBC Press is the Canadian agent for several international publishers. Visit our Publishers Represented page to learn more.