Women Speak Volume 7

The Women of Appalachia Project¿ was created to address discrimination directed at women from the Appalachian region by encouraging participation from women artists of diverse backgrounds, ages and experiences to come together, to embrace the stereotype, to show the whole woman; beyond the superficial factors that people use to judge her. ¿Despite the educational and economic inequalities in Appalachia, despite the lack of adequate healthcare and jobs, despite the lack of infrastructure, there are women, such as these, who have contributed to the "Women Speak" Volume Six anthology, standing in defiance, their words and art like steel girders. In this anthology, this hope chest of creativity, it is the power of the feminine that covers grief with love, suffering with resilience, disappointment with hope, and vulnerability with pride. Some of these poems, stories, songs, memories, and art pieces will make readers smile, even laugh; some will bring them to awed silence or tears; but all will leave them with a sense of what it means to be "stitched at the seam of the mountain." These are offerings of survival and strength. Despite all the forces set in place to silence them, these beautiful, fierce women speak and in their voices and truths, there is no lack at all. Sandy Coomer - author of Available Light and director of Rockvale Writers' Colony