Here's another startling take from Sarah Taber via Twitter, if the link doesn't rot, thanks to Elmo:
Someday I'd love to have the time to do a podcast episode on Wendell Berry, how the state department launched his career, and how that made him The Voice of Rural America rather than Cesar Chavez, Fannie Lou Hamer, Dolly Parton, or literally anyone else with a lick of sense.
The conservatism of the rural US isn't inevitable or natural. It's from about 120 years of political terraforming.
Who gets state sponsorship to tell the public how rural areas work, and how they *should* work, is a huge part of that political project.
Anyway if you wanna know more, here's a nice primer on the Iowa Writers Workshop and how the CIA backed it as an anticommunist propaganda shop.
Berry's career was launched by its sister program at Stanford, which has gotten less attention, in 1958.
And if anyone's tempted to explain to me "but no, Berry isn't conservative, he's all about racial harmony!" I'm BEGGING you to google Jim Crow, sharecropping, and paternalism and re-read what he has to say about Black Americans with fresh eyes.
Well.
I haven't read that much Berry, I admit, and now I feel less regret about my choices.
I'm very much looking forward to the publication of Taber's book, which should be coming out fairly soon.
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Past posts involving Sarah Taber:
Learning About "Traditional" Farming
Sarah Taber, Pellagra, Pecans, Wow
O Pioneers!
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