“In this tale of the collective African-American search for a place to call home, Brown provides an insightful look at 20th-century American culture.”—Publishers Weekly
“Brown is an engaging writer. . . . This book provides insight into the interconnected issues of identity formation, social and geographic mobility, and the concept of homeplace, along with the effects of quality education and the movement of civil rights. Gone Home: Race and Roots through Appalachia does all of this superbly.”—Journal of Appalachian Studies
“Engaging. . . . By helping to make visible a population too long neglected, Karida L. Brown is doing work that is especially important today.”—American Historical Review
“Like the best of such case studies, Brown’s intimate portrait of African Americans' ties to a single place—much of it cast in the form of 'back home' nostalgia—tells us much about their resilience and resourcefulness.”—Journal of American History
“Karida L. Brown’s work continues to complicate Appalachian history by surveying the lived experiences of black residents in Harlan County, Kentucky. . . . The personal stories of black Appalachians provide useful data for seasoned researchers.”—Journal of Southern History
“A masterful work of both narrative and scientific importance. . . . Gone Home should be required reading for anyone interested in Appalachia. . . . [A]n excellent tale of reminiscing and what might have been. It will occupy a place on my shelf for years to come.”—Midwest Book Review
“In Gone Home, Brown fills the pages with stories of people who lived in Benham and Lynch; she uses many of their own words to express their lived experiences. In combining historical and sociological methodologies, Brown successfully shows that although physical elements of these Black communities in Appalachia have largely disappeared, the communities themselves still thrive in migrants' memories and their continued connections with one another.”—Journal of African American History
“Breathtaking in its scope, substance, and style, Gone Home breaks important new ground. Karida Brown’s distinctive and compelling voice will deeply impact both scholarly and public audiences. This book is poised to become a classic.” —David Cunningham, Washington University in St. Louis
“Gone Home is a migrating portrait of black families who moved from Alabama plantations to Kentucky coalfields, and from there to cities across the nation. Displaced by industrial decline, these families were forced to redefine the meaning of home and homemaking. Karida Brown eloquently follows the twentieth-century Great Migration and shows how it transformed African American identity and culture. Her beautiful book offers a deep understanding of both the American South and our nation.”—William Ferris, author of The South in Color: A Visual Journal
“In this wondrous and careful work of essential and classic southern sociology, Karida Leigh Brown brilliantly illuminates black subjectivities as lived, realized, and constituted in the overlooked ancestral African American homeland of Appalachian coal country. Traversing time and space, race and region, Gone Home tells about the South in ways heretofore unimaginable.”—Zandria Robinson, author of This Ain’t Chicago
