Documentaries and books about the practice of mountaintop removal mining have sprung up in recent years, calling attention to the controversial practice.
“Something’s Rising” by Silas House and Jason Howard is mainly a collection of oral histories from 12 Appalachians who are trying to stop mountaintop removal mining. Author, Silas House, joined their cause several years ago after he toured a mountaintop removal site.
“I just kept trying to find ways to fight against mountaintop removal, and I did lots of writing about it, editorials and things like that. I knew that it needed a bigger project and a project that was maybe bigger than I could handle,” House said. “I asked a friend, Jason Howard, and the more we talked about it, the more we knew we had to do a book.”
“The book was intended not to just be a protest against the practice of mountaintop removal and what mountaintop removal is doing to the people, what it’s doing to our culture is it’s damaging all of that,” said co-author, Jason Howard. “We are surrounded in Appalachia by mountains. They are in our blood and in our DNA.”
Howard says the two authors traveled throughout eastern Kentucky and southern West Virginia. They were welcomed into people’s homes and fed soup beans and cornbread in Clay County, Kentucky and humus in a holler in Floyd County.
“It was just such a pleasure sitting down and being welcomed into these peoples’ homes and spending the day with them and getting to know them,” Howard said.
“When you have people who are living in the face of this and fighting this day in and day out, people like Carl Shoupe and Bev May and Pat Hudson and Judy Bonds and all the rest of them who are on the front lines dealing with this, who don’t have the luxury of a buffer zone between them and the heat of the battle, I just take my hat off to them.”
“Something’s Rising” includes oral histories with some celebrities, like Kathy Mattea, and community activists involved in the movement to stop mountaintop removal mining. Each chapter focuses on one person’s story.
“This is a book by Appalachians, about Appalachians, about an Appalachian issue that affects all Americans. Jason and I both believe that if more people knew about this issue, then more people would stand up against it, because I really believe that Americans usually do the right thing when they can, when they’re informed,” said House
Howard says the book’s title, “Something’s Rising,” comes from a song called Crank’s Creek by the Real World String Band.
“We felt the song represented the movement, and it was a nice contrast to think that mountaintop removal is tearing down the land and the culture and the people, but there’s a band of people out there and they’re causing something to rise up,” said Howard.
“Something’s Rising” by Silas House and Jason Howard will be released April 17. A book tour with stops in Bowling Green and Lexington, Kentucky and Harrogate, Tennessee begins the same week.