Hutchins Library News Blog

This week we are featuring Backwoods Witchcraft: Conjure and Folk Magic from Appalachia by Jake Richards. You do not need to be a conjurer or witch in order to enjoy this book. This is a good book if you want to learn more about Appalachia and its tradition of conjure magic. Richards writes with a knowledgeable and welcoming style that draws you in whether you are a native, a transplant, or just a visitor. This book is as close as you can get to sitting with the author on a porch just listening to the stories, traditions, and conjures. The book explores some parts of Appalachia that few people in the region talk about, and Richards is generous with the knowledge. See below for book description and location details in the library. 

Backwoods Witchcraft by Jake Richards; Starr Casas (Foreword by)

Call Number: 133.4309 R516b 2019

ISBN: 9781578636532

Publication Date: 2019-06-01

In Backwoods Witchcraft, Jake Richards offers up a folksy stew of family stories, lore, omens, rituals, and conjure crafts that he learned from his great-grandmother, his grandmother, and his grandfather, a Baptist minister who Jake remembers could "rid someone of a fever with an egg or stop up the blood in a wound." The witchcraft practiced in Appalachia is very much a folk magic of place, a tradition that honors the seen and unseen beings that inhabit the land as well as the soil, roots, and plant life. The materials and tools used in Appalachia witchcraft are readily available from the land. This "grounded approach" will be of keen interest to witches and conjure folk regardless of where they live. Readers will be guided in how to build relationships with the spirits and other beings that dwell around them and how to use the materials and tools that are readily available on the land where one lives. This book also provides instructions on how to create a working space and altar and make conjure oils and powders. A wide array of tried-and-true formulas are also offered for creating wealth, protecting one from gossip, spiritual cleansing, and more. 

Celebrated annually on August 26 in the United States, Women's Equality Day commemorates the adoption of the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution in 1920. The 19th Amendment prohibits the federal government and states from denying the right to vote to U.S. citizens on the basis of sex. It was first celebrated in 1971. Congress designated the observance in 1973. Traditionally, the President of the United States issues a proclamation for the observance every year starting with President Richard Nixon in 1973. 

Here are some websites where you can learn more: 

• "From Suffrage Day to Women’s Equality Day: A Brief History of Celebrating August 26" via Library of Congress.
• "Women’s Equality Day" via National Women's History Alliance. 
• "Women’s Equality Day: August 26, 2023." Some facts and figures about it via the U.S. Census Bureau.

If you are interested in doing further research on this topic you can try the following databases, which you can find on the library website under "Electronic Resources:"

• Gale Virtual Reference Center. A collection of e-book reference works. 
• Hein Online. For legal and government documents research. 

From our shelves, here are some books that may be of interest: 

Gendered Citizenship by Rebecca DeWolf

Call Number: e-book

ISBN: 9781496228291

Publication Date: 2021-10-01

By engaging deeply with American legal and political history as well as the increasingly rich material on gender history, Gendered Citizenship illuminates the ideological contours of the original struggle over the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) from 1920 to 1963. As the first comprehensive, full-length history of that struggle, this study grapples not only with the battle over women's constitutional status but also with the more than forty-year mission to articulate the boundaries of what it means to be an American citizen. Through an examination of an array of primary source materials, Gendered Citizenship contends that the original ERA conflict is best understood as the terrain that allowed Americans to reconceptualize citizenship to correspond with women's changing status after the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment. Finally, Rebecca DeWolf considers the struggle over the ERA in a new light: focusing not on the familiar theme of why the ERA failed to gain enactment, but on how the debates transcended traditional liberal versus conservative disputes in early to mid-twentieth-century America. The conflict, DeWolf reveals, ultimately became the defining narrative for the changing nature of American citizenship in the era.  

 

American Women's Suffrage: Voices from the Long Struggle for the Vote 1776-1965 (LOA #332) by Susan Ware (Editor)

Call Number: 324.623 A512 2020

ISBN: 9781598536645

Publication Date: 2020-07-07

For the first time, here is the full, definitive story of the movement for voting rights for American women, of every race, told through the voices of the women and men who lived it. Here are the most recognisable figures in the campaign for women s suffrage, like Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, but also the black, Chinese, and American Indian women and men who were not only essential to the movement but expanded its directions and aims. Here, too, are the anti-suffragists who worried about where the country would head if the right to vote were universal.

 

Suffrage At 100 by Stacie Taranto (Editor); Leandra Zarnow (Editor)

Call Number: 320.082 S946 2020

ISBN: 9781421438689

Publication Date: 2020-08-04

Suffrage at 100 looks at women's engagement in US electoral politics and government over the one hundred years since the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment. In the 2018 midterm elections, 102 women were elected to the House and 14 to the Senate--a record for both bodies. And yet nearly a century after the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment, the notion of congressional gender parity by 2020--a stated goal of the National Women's Political Caucus at the time of its founding in 1971--remains a distant ideal. In Suffrage at 100, Stacie Taranto and Leandra Zarnow bring together twenty-two scholars to take stock of women's engagement in electoral politics over the past one hundred years. This is the first wide-ranging collection to historically examine women's full political engagement in and beyond electoral office since they gained a constitutional right to vote. The book explores why women's access to, and influence on, political power remains frustratingly uneven, particularly for women of color and queer women. Examining how women have acted collectively and individually, both within and outside of electoral and governmental channels, the book moves from the front lines of community organizing to the highest glass ceiling. Essays touch on * labor and civil rights * education * environmentalism * enfranchisement and voter suppression * conservatism vs. liberalism * indigeneity and transnationalism * LGBTQ and personal politics * Pan-Asian, Chicana, and black feminisms * commemoration and public history * and much more. Contributors: Melissa Estes Blair, Eileen Boris, Marisela R. Chávez, Claire Delahaye, Nicole Eaton, Liette Gidlow, Holly Miowak Guise (Iñupiaq), Emily Suzanne Johnson, Dean J. Kotlowski, Monica L. Mercado, Johanna Neuman, Kathleen Banks Nutter, Katherine Parkin, Ellen G. Rafshoon, Bianca Rowlett, Sarah B. Rowley, Ana Stevenson, Barbara Winslow, Judy Tzu-Chun Wu, Nancy Beck Young.

 

Vanguard by Martha S. Jones

Call Number: 323.3409 J781v 2021

ISBN: 9781541600256

Publication Date: 2021-12-07

"An elegant and expansive history" (New York Times) of African American women's pursuit of political power--and how it transformed America      In Vanguard, acclaimed historian Martha S. Jones offers a new history of African American women's political lives in America. She recounts how they defied both racism and sexism to fight for the ballot, and how they wielded political power to secure the equality and dignity of all persons. From the earliest days of the republic to the passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act and beyond, Jones excavates the lives and work of Black women--Maria Stewart, Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, Fannie Lou Hamer, and more--who were the vanguard of women's rights, calling on America to realize its best ideals.       Now revised to discuss the election of Vice President Kamala Harris and the vital contributions of Black women in the 2020 elections, Vanguard is essential reading for anyone who cares about the past and future of American democracy. 

 

 

Roberto Clemente rose from poverty in Puerto Rico to become one of the greatest to play in Major League Baseball. He faced racism and discrimination constantly, yet  found fame, fortune, and went on to also become a philanthropist. He died on December 31, 1972, when the plane he was in crashed; he was delivering a relief mission to Nicaragua at the time. In 1973, posthumously, he went on to be the first Latin American inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame.

The author presents Clemente as he was and also gives us a glimpse of the Puerto Rico that Clemente grew up in. The art is also very good in this volume. This is a graphic novel for readers of all ages. It is one I am happy to recommend. 

See below for the publisher's description of the book and the call number information so you can find it on our shelves. Book is located in the library's Graphic Novels Collection on the main floor.

21: The Story of Roberto Clemente by Wilfred Santiago

Call Number: 741.597 S235t 2011

ISBN: 9781560978923

Publication Date: 2011-04-12

A graphic novel biography of Puerto Rico's greatest baseball star.21 is an all-ages graphic biography of baseball star Roberto Clemente: No other baseball player dominated the 1960s like him and no other Latin American player achieved his numbers. 21 chronicles his early days growing up in rural Puerto Rico, the highlights of his career (including the 1960s World Series), the prejudice he faced, his private life and his humanitarian mission. Santiago captures the grit of Clemente's rise from his impoverished childhood, to the majesty of his performance on the field, to his fundamental decency as a human being, in a drawing style that combines realistic attention to detail and expressive cartooning.

. 

Born on a day like today in 1920, Ray Douglas Bradbury is one of the greatest and most celebrated writers from the United States. He was a prolific writer in various genres including science fiction, fantasy, horror, and mystery. According to the St. James Encyclopedia of Popular Culture, "by the early years of the twenty-first century, Bradbury had published more than 500 works, but age did not impede his writing or threaten his impact on American popular culture" (see below for citation). 

Bradbury died in 2012 at the age of 91. In his lifetime he received many honors such as recognition from the National Book Foundation for "Distinguished Contributions to American Letters" to a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Other awards include the title of Grandmaster from the Science Fiction Writers of America and the National Medal of Arts. 

Here is a selection of Bradbury's works available at our library that you can check out with a college ID: 

Ray Bradbury: Novels and Story Cycles (LOA #347) by Ray Bradbury; Jonathan R. Eller (Editor)

Call Number: Fiction B798no 2021

ISBN: 9781598537000

Publication Date: 2021-09-07

Four classics of the imagination from one of America's most beloved authors--including the complete Martian Chronicles. A master storyteller and visionary champion of creative freedom, Ray Bradbury is one of the most beloved and influential writers of our time. To explore the worlds of his books, his astonishing futures and haunting pasts, is to rediscover the wondrous possibilities of life. This Library of America edition gathers four of his greatest works in a single volume. Here is The Martian Chronicles in the complete form Bradbury came to prefer, its twenty-eight linked story-chapters offering visionary glimpses of our spacefaring future. In the dystopian thriller Fahrenheit 451, books and all they contain are forbidden. Dandelion Wine distills the enchanting essences of a childhood summer, while Something Wicked This Way Comes conjures the wild, centrifugal imaginings of youthful terror, in a fight to the death against supernatural foes. Biographer Jonathan R. Eller offers a newly researched chronology of Bradbury's life and career and detailed textual and explanatory notes. 

 

Ray Bradbury: the Illustrated Man, the October Country and Other Stories (LOA #360) by Ray Bradbury; Jonathan R. Eller (Editor)

Call Number: Fiction B798iL 2022

ISBN: 9781598537284

Publication Date: 2022-10-04

In one authoritative volume, here are two landmark story collections by one of America's most beloved authors, plus 27 stellar, speculative, and strange tales from other collections, including 7 restored to print The author of over 400 short stories, Ray Bradbury was a master not only in the science fiction genre, for which he is best known, but also in speculative, horror, and dark fantasy. Here are two of Bradbury's most beloved collections, along with twenty-seven other stories, that together represent the best of Bradbury's stories of the 1940s, 50s, and 60s.    The Illustrated Man--the more Earthbound science fiction companion to Bradbury's classic collection The Martian Chronicles--contains eighteen short stories bound together by the unifying metaphor of a strangely tattooed outcast. The stories explore both the dehumanizing possibilities of space-age technology--in "The Veldt" and "The Rocket Man"--and the pessimistic, dark side of humanity, as in "The Visitor."   The October Country collects nineteen short stories: macabre carnival tales, speculative horror, and strange fantasy. "Uncle Einar" and "Homecoming" concern the monstrous and immortal Elliott family. In "The Next in Line," a woman becomes convinced that she'll never leave the small, Mexican town she's traveled to on vacation. And in "Touched with Fire," two old men have learned to predict future murders. This edition restores the original artwork by Joe Mugnaini.     Rounding out the volume are twenty-seven other short stories from the first half of Bradbury's career selected by Bradbury scholar Joanthan R, Eller, including "Frost and Fire," in which humans on another planet live only eight days; "The Pedestrian," about the only man in the world who does not watch television, and "I Sing the Body Electric!," in which a family purchases a robotic grandmother. Also includes such hard to find stories as "R is for Rocket," "Asleep in Armageddon," and "The Lost City of Mars."  

 

Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, Francois Truffaut (film director)

Call Number: DVD 791.437 F158 2003

ISBN: 9780783255354

Publication Date: 2003

Quote source: 

Lovett-Graff, Bennett. "Bradbury, Ray (1920–2012)." St. James Encyclopedia of Popular Culture, edited by Thomas Riggs, 2nd ed., vol. 1, St. James Press, 2013, pp. 401-402. Gale eBooks, link.gale.com/apps/doc/CX2735800348/GVRL?u=berea&sid=bookmark-GVRL&xid=1f08b1df. Accessed 22 Aug. 2023. 

You can access this article and many others on a variety of topics through Gale Virtual Reference, our online collection of reference works. You can find Gale Virtual Reference on the library website under "Electronic Resources." Note that if you are trying to access our library's resources from outside the Berea College domain, you will be prompted to log in with your BC credentials. 

From Amanda Peach, Associate Library Director: 

Hi All,

At the end of spring semester, many textbooks were discarded/left behind in bins in our residence halls. Since then, they have been transported to Hutchins, sorted into subject area, labeled, and placed atop the reference shelves on the main floor of Hutchins.

They are FREE and available to you. Reuse books and save money - win/win! 

You are welcome to visit the library anytime that we're open this summer, Monday - Friday, 8 am - 5pm, and take what you need. 

The books will remain through the first week of the fall 2023 term.