Abiding Appalachia- Alex Parkinson

I will be the first to admit that I am terrible at reading poetry. However, with that said I can say that I enjoyed Abiding Appalachia. I thought it offered a very direct and different way for Awiakta to share her feeling about living in the place where the atomic bomb was essentially created. To be honest, before and even after reading this I had no idea what Oak Ridge was. I looked it up after I finished and all of a sudden the whole book made sense.

I saw a few similarities between Abiding Appalachia and the other books we have read in class. The first similarity that I saw was the theme of secrecy. This is a topic that is covered in both books but definitely more prominent in Full Body Burden. In Abiding Appalachia she speaks of it as a mystery and not necessarily a secret. Does that mean that when the Manhattan Project was happening essentially right next to her the residents had no idea? I understand that it is important to keep these things a secret from people because of security reasons but I also think the government has a responsibility to let its people know what is going on. When Awiakta talks about the radioactive cow I find it interesting that the cow is locked behind a fence to see what kinds of things happen to it when it's exposed to radiation. This makes no sense to me because if the cow is radioactive I don’t think having it behind a fence is going to keep the radiation away from the people. This is something we also saw in Full Body Burden. Radiation doesn’t know borders

Another thing I find interesting about Abiding Appalachia is that the town is behind fences. This is something that made me think all the way back to Parable of the Sower. Awiakta stays that they were, “sheltered in the secret and free to play as long as we stay inside the fence” (31). This reminded me of Parable of the Sower because for them the fence represented safety and a place where they could let their guard down. I do not believe the same is true for Abiding Appalachia, because they had to keep the secret inside the fence and what was going on was obviously not something that was widely talked about I believe it is a place where their guards had to be put up. I think that one false move could probably get you in a lot of trouble in Oak Ridge.