海角大神

In her lovely, multifaceted memoir, Jayne Anne Phillips celebrates her hometown in the Allegheny Mountains of north central West Virginia. 鈥淪mall Town Girls鈥� offers a window into how her strong sense of place shaped her as a writer, and also pushes back against what she calls the 鈥渄ark and dense鈥� myths and stereotypes of deprivation that shadow the region.

鈥淗ometowns are full of stories and memories rinsed with color,鈥� Phillips writes in this radiant collection of 22 linked, autobiographical essays. 鈥淯nderstand: born and raised in West Virginia, you can never truly leave.鈥�

Phillips grew up in the 1950s and 1960s in a brick ranch house designed by her father, Russell Randolph Phillips, on a rural road just outside the town of Buckhannon, the county seat of Upshur County. Relatives from both sides of her family had helped settle the area when it was still a territory. Her mother鈥檚 people, the Thornhills and Boyds, fought for the Union during the Civil War, while the Phillips men, who lived in Randolph County, just to the south, were Confederates. (West Virginia had seceded from Virginia to support the Union.)

Both of Phillips鈥� parents made their mark on the town. Her father, a concrete contractor, built the sidewalks. Her mother, Martha Jane Thornhill Phillips, 鈥渁 bit of a pioneer,鈥� was a rare working mom who taught in the local elementary school while raising Phillips and her two brothers and taking classes toward a graduate degree. Phillips remembers her mother always grading papers and making sure her less fortunate students were fed and warmly clothed.

Phillips brings to this memoir the kind of resonant details and sharp insights that have enriched her fiction, from 鈥淏lack Tickets鈥� (1979) and 鈥淢achine Dreams鈥� (1984) to her Pulitzer prize-winning 2023 novel, 鈥淣ight Watch,鈥� set in the aftermath of the Civil War. At once nostalgic and clear-eyed, Phillips鈥� mix of personal, family, and local history in 鈥淪mall Town Girls鈥� convincingly conveys why she finds Buckhannon 鈥渢he perfect birthplace for a writer.鈥�

Her father called her brothers by their names, but he called her 鈥淢iss.鈥� She recalls puzzling over phrases like 鈥淪uffer the little children鈥� in Bible school at their Methodist Church, and childhood summers that were 鈥渁 long, spooled dream鈥� shared with her brothers, who eventually moved deeper into the South as she moved north. They were physically active, while she 鈥渟tood still, looking and listening,鈥� a writer in the making.

Phillips brings understanding and empathy to her parents, whose 鈥渆mbattled鈥� marriage ended as their children left home. She writes movingly, 鈥淭he past is their story and their legacy.鈥� She was her mother鈥檚 confidante and final caregiver, and recalls as an adolescent accompanying her mother to the beauty parlor for her mother鈥檚 weekly hair appointments. Later, she came to realize the importance of these rituals: 鈥淕irls need sanctums.鈥�

Phillips鈥� gaze often extends beyond family; her roots are so entwined with local history that it is nearly impossible to disentangle them. In a chapter titled 鈥淧aradise Lost: West Virginia,鈥� she traces how the isolated, verdant, mountainous land, long a 鈥減aradise for flora and fauna,鈥� was compromised by the 鈥渕ighty rivers鈥� that fed it. 鈥淔irst came the timber barons, who finished cutting the giant trees and floated the wood to market on the rivers. Then came the coal companies, with their throbbing deep mines and company stores that turned men into indentured labor.鈥� She particularly rues the desecration wrought by strip mines, mountaintop mining, and fracking, which began in the 1980s and 鈥�90s.

A recap of the famous, long-running 1880s feud between the Hatfields and the McCoys is hard to follow, though Phillips makes clear that she finds the whole mess 鈥測et another condescending variation of Appalachia bashing: observe the ignorant hillbillies killing one another over the ownership of a hog.鈥�

There are multiple reminders of what drives Phillips as a writer. Her impassioned tributes to Breece D鈥橨 Pancake, from a small town in southwest West Virginia, and Stephen Crane, 鈥淎merica鈥檚 first rock-star writer,鈥� are telling. Writers, she notes, are outsiders who 鈥渙ccupy a kind of border country, focused on the details that speak to us.鈥� From this vantage point, they 鈥渄efy time, writing words against the erasure of things and lives. We stand in an avalanche of forgetfulness, resisting the sway of disappearance.鈥�

The payoff? 鈥淲riting, we cross the divide between self and others word by word.鈥� With 鈥淪mall Town Girls,鈥� Phillips has once again crossed that divide 鈥� beautifully.