Appalachia is Magical Realism as told by Two Kentuckys + Interview with Author, Bobi Conn
By Chava Possum
SPOILER ALERT: A Woman in Time & Kentucky Route Zero
Author’s Note: As you’re reading, I encourage you to listen to the soundtrack from Kentucky Route Zero for ambience.
“Appalachia is magical realism,” Bobi Conn, author of the 2022 novel, A Woman in Time said to me. We were discussing ghosts, of all things, during our interview, when Bobi dropped this incredible statement. It captivated me… and confused me.
On the one hand, (to be a little corny), I do think Appalachia– mine and Bobi Conn’s home region– is magical. Surreal in its diversity of people, cultures, beliefs, and ways of being. On the other hand, Appalachia has historically been cast as an “other” in the United States by outside journalists and color writers, who often stereotyped Appalachians and blamed the environment for its magical, though detrimental, hold on its occupants, isolating them from the rest of the country and “forward progress.”
The Works Progress Administration (WPA), started in 1935, had a program called the Federal Writers’ Project that produced the American Guide book series. They captured life sketches and living lore around the country, but especially in Appalachia. Through their outsiders’ lens, despite claims of objectivity, they saw regular folks as if they just walked out of a time machine– dressed “old-timey” and living in conditions similar to the mid-1800s. Not just this, but their cultures seemed to outsiders to be strange and foreign, too. Combined, the perspective these writers formed either cast people in a romantic light or in a negative one.
In my discussion with Bobi, we explored the dichotomies of Appalachia. She said,
“In my memoir, I question: How do we grapple in honest ways with the problems and challenges that a subculture (like in Appalachia) faces while at the same time, uplifting our culture? Shining a light on the beauty of it. People are comfortable with binaries— good or bad.”
From the book Confronting Appalachian Stereotypes: Back Talk from Appalachia,
“Backwardness, superstition, and ignorance, or innocence, simplicity, and kindness– the hillbilly embodied it all. They are portrayed as passive, fatalistic, ignorant, gullible, easily-flattered, greedy, violent, treacherous, and revengeful.”
Why are such stereotypes repeated? For what purpose? In one sense, what is repeated generally keeps getting repeated. The status quo portrayal of Appalachia multiplied itself as more and more writers, historians, journalists, reporters, and others built on the foundation they had been given. But, on a deeper level, stereotypes can serve agendas. Also from Confronting Appalachian Stereotypes,
“For the past one hundred years the rest of America has projected unwanted parts of itself, as well as a yearning for innocence, onto Appalachia. By scapegoating Appalachians as greedy, savage children wantonly destroying their environment, the rest of America can feel grown-up, responsible, and civilized.”
But the people of Appalachia are so much more complicated than that.
Bobi Conn grew up in Morehead, Kentucky, in the foothills of the mountains. When I asked her what she misses about home, she mentioned the warmth of people– that southern hospitality– and the landscape itself. Not a city person, Bobi instead loves the hills.
“I found our landscape so comforting. I felt like it was a hug– a maternal hug. I feel that way still. When I go places where there are no hills, I wonder how people stand this.”
I asked Bobi about her favorite mountain memory. She replied,
“My granny’s house was within walking distance, you could see it from our house. We had one hill across from our house where we played the most. One day, I decided to go by myself one hill over– I was 7 or 8. I felt like I was getting far from home, I was really exploring. I came across a mountain laurel tree and a lot of the other trees didn’t have green leaves at that time. I suspect it was Fall. All I could think of was orange trees I’d seen in commercials, so I called it the orange tree in my head. When the leaves drop, they curl up really tightly. I was going to uncurl the leaves, and every time I tried they broke. I got frustrated. What does the inside look like as a whole leaf? I don’t know why I was so fixated. Finally, I uncurled one and it had a little feather in it. Immediately, I interpreted that as that one of my ancestors had put the feather there for me, so I could find it decades later. That feather was a promise and a comfort– we are here for you, we are watching over you. That satisfied me; I found my treasure. I tried to take it home. When I got to our driveway, I opened my hand and the feather was gone. (I was already a very superstitious child.) I interpreted that as I couldn’t bring something so delicate and beautiful into our home. It’s part of the wild beauty outside.”
Love for that memory, that mountain, that home is complicated– for those who stay in Appalachia and those who leave. Bobi said,
“I always miss where I actually grew up; a place I can’t ever call home again. If my grandparents were alive, I’d want to be there and yet there is a real tension for me when I’m there or in other rural areas that I don’t feel like I read as an insider all the time while being an outsider everywhere else.”
This insider-outsider dynamic at play in Appalachians’ minds both within the region and without generates a friction and cognitive dissonance that can be served well by magical realism. It shows up in both texts we will explore in this essay. Some Appalachians, when they leave the region, feel as though they are outsiders everywhere they go, and make adjustments to themselves as a way to ward off stereotypes, including accents. I asked Bobi Conn about her relationship with her own accent.
“When I moved to Berea, I both consciously and subconsciously found ways to hide my accent.”
She became very aware of word choice and avoided “Hillbilly-isms”, wanting to be respected and taken seriously. Growing up, Bobi was on the Debate team and traveled to compete. At other schools, she’d hear the other students mocking her team for how they sounded. This continued into adulthood, too. Bobi shared,
“I’d have friends over and if I was on the phone with my family back home, my friends would comment on my accent. Everyone else was already part of this inside group, whereas I was a fish out of water.”
As an outsider now, studying Appalachia, am I viewing my home through rose-colored glasses? Certainly as a child, I wasn’t proud of who I was or where I was from– nothing magical about the place. All I wanted was to get away. Once away, however, I missed it terribly, especially when I realized that I was the first one in my family to leave the region entirely. I walk the line between mythologizing Appalachia as an outsider and appreciating my home for the unique place it is as an insider. So when Bobi said, “Appalachia is magical realism,” it unearthed confusing feelings about me and my place in this surreal land. And the deeper I dig, the more trippy it gets.
What even is Appalachia? What kind of magic does it hold? What does it mean to be an Appalachian? We’ll explore these questions and magical realism via two pieces of Kentucky media: the novel, A Woman in Time and the 2013 video game, Kentucky Route Zero.
A Woman in Time is Bobi Conn’s first novel, set in Prohibition era, rural Kentucky, and follows the life of Rosalee– a young woman who grew up with magic all around her, but struggles to maintain that magic in the face of marriage, children, abuse, and the daily struggles of country life. Rosalee is the youngest, and only, surviving member of the Mackenzie matrilineal line– women who, through a grit of spirit and physical strength were able to navigate rural society in their own way, not accepting men’s abuse, digging up food and medicine in the forests, and practicing healing– something that men around them saw as witchcraft, suspicious at the very least. But Rosalee, alone after her mother’s and aunt’s passing, finds herself up against some brutal forces that she can’t control. Still very much a child, Rosalee marries young to someone she doesn’t love, has children– some she questions if she even wants– and there’s no way out. Rosalee bears these struggles, connecting with other women in her extended family for support, and gives support in turn. We follow the daily ins-and-outs of Rosalee’s life on the farm with her husband, Samuel, a moonshiner. Most of the time, especially when Samuel is out of town, the farm is like a haven– beautiful and safe. But sometimes, especially when Samuel is around, the farm feels like a trap she can’t escape. Though the book is historical fiction, magical realism is present throughout the story– cultivating a sense of the world we find ourselves in: one that is both joyful and terrible and one we can’t always understand.
Kentucky Route Zero, created by cardboard computer, is a five-act, story-based video game set in contemporary Kentucky, following a group of characters as they try to make a delivery to the elusive 5 Dogwood Drive. To get there, they have to take “the Zero”-- an underground highway few know how to get to or even use, its rules not like those on any other highway. In an effort to get directions to the Zero, we interact with odd, lonely, loving people. We collect new members of our traveling group as we go, only to part ways after finding 5 Dogwood Drive and finally making our delivery.
The game’s surrealism is in its strange locales, unexpected surprises, and the way the game presents you with information, which can at times border on tedious, creating a trippy, lost-in-information sensation. The bureaucracy our characters interact with to find the Zero is cumbersome, nebulous, and annoyingly realistic despite the absurdity. The player is forced to exercise some patience and willingness to follow the game down whatever rabbit hole it takes you, hoping it all makes sense in the end (which, if you’re wondering, it does.) Synthwave music, paired with occasional indie bluegrass tunes, situate us in a modern Kentucky– with tech issues to boot– where melancholy and the blissful inevitability of the coming “end” anchor our characters in their own unique battles within this confusing landscape. Though their struggles are not always front and center, most of the characters worry about money, about their health, and about their fragile communities, changed by corporate exploitation and environmental damage. And yet, the characters take time and energy to help one another. They support each other until the end of the game– the death of the 5 Dogwood Drive community– when the characters must part ways to continue their lives elsewhere.
Place matters. Navigating the landscape of this region takes on mythic proportions and, under magical realism, place becomes surreal. Sometimes, the landscape itself is fluid, locations moving about, leaving the traveler, or the wanderer, at the mercy of the environment.
In Kentucky Route Zero, the act of seeking out the Zero and, ultimately, 5 Dogwood Drive is the point of the entire game– finding a place. And the journey towards finding is dream-like, liminal.
For example, when we are traveling the Echo River in Act 4 of Kentucky Route Zero, we learn that the gas station we need to stop at moves around. The ferryboat captain, Cate, explains, “Sure, it’s not anchored or anything – could be anywhere up and down the Echo. You just kind of run into it when you need it, or hopefully a little before you need it.”
Even the directions characters give to us to the Zero are intangible. At a bar, Conway is joined by Shannon, Ezra, and a musical duo– Junebug and Johnny. The pair are at the bar to perform. Harry stands behind the counter. When we ask how to get to the Zero, Harry explains,
“Well, here’s what you’ve got to do: take a left out of the parking lot, and then just fiddle around on your dial until you hear something familiar, but… I mean, familiar, but strange. You know the feeling? Like… I used to go hunt with my uncle, out in the mountains, and now I watch these nature programs. They’re filmed in the mountains, and there’s the deer, and I know all the plants and every kind of tree, but something just doesn’t look right. And it’s even stranger for being so close to familiar. Something like that. You’ll know it when you hear it. Fix that strange but familiar station on your dial, drive for a bit, then turn around when the station cuts out. I mean right then. Hope you folks find what you’re looking for… eventually.”
So what about the place of Appalachia? The setting of our two stories.
What is Appalachia?
If you want the 30,000 foot view, Appalachia is an ancient region, generally defined according to the geographical parameters shown here, however, definitions tend to be very fluid.
The Appalachian mountains are some of the oldest in the world. From Backwoods Witchcraft,
“When the mountains first formed during the time of Pangea, they covered half the world. When the land of Pangea broke apart; it carried remains of this mountain chain across the globe; forming the mountains of the British Isles, the Scottish Highlands, Scandinavia, and the Little Atlas mountain range of Morocco.”
To me, and some others, Appalachia is a geographical, historical, and political invention to contextualize American identity in a capitalist framework for the purposes of dividing people and places into useful categories. The author explains in Monacans and Miners,
“The concept of Appalachia is a fluid social construction that emerged with the expansion of America– a formidable testing ground for ‘otherness’.”
That otherness was reinforced by environmental determinism.
“Some of the same geographers who invented Appalachia advocated environmental determinism, or the idea that climate and geography generate human differences and drive history.”
– Ramp Hollow: The Ordeal of Appalachia
There are many ways to define Appalachia beyond using a map. Some try to define the region according to its peoples’ culture, however, there is no single monolithic “Appalachian culture”. Seeking one out is an exercise in questioning whose culture in the large region of Appalachia is more or less important or “authentic.”
What is Appalachian culture?
When you hear that phrase, “Appalachian culture”, what images pop up? Some of y’all might imagine log cabins, moonshine, tobacco, quilts, wildflowers, hunting, old homesteads, coal mines, backwoods churches, buttered biscuits, overalls, and molasses. These images are all a part of Appalachian histories and identities, but they are still only a fragment of the bigger tapestry of Appalachian cultures. But we must be mindful of where such mental images come from, especially looking at the impacts of poverty.
From the book What You Are Getting Wrong About Appalachia,
“Defining Appalachian culture is often a top-down process, in which individuals with power or capital tell us who or what we are. By its design, the region came to be defined by poverty, and subsequently poverty came to be defined by the region. There is the belief that Appalachia is a third world within the heart of America.”
So, to some, Appalachian culture is poverty embodied. But that’s such a lacking mentality, focusing on what Appalachia doesn’t have as opposed to what it does have. Often the negatives outshine the positives. One such positive cultural phenomenon that I’ve witnessed in my life is what I like to call “porch culture.”
I grew up on peoples’ porches in the mornings and evenings– eating, socializing, taking in fresh air, playing games, drinking, smoking, even sleeping. I didn’t realize that wasn’t everyone’s normal until I left. I asked Bobi Conn, “Did you experience something similar with porches from your home culture?”
She told me that her childhood took place on the porch, a big one with church pews for seating. The porch was its own landscape– part of the home, but not inside. Historically, entertainment options being different than they are now, the porch provided a significant break from being inside. A lot of women’s work can take place on a porch (laundry, snapping beans, shucking corn.) And yet, when the men take over the porch, it’s not seen as a women’s space.
“In your book,” I said to Bobi, “Rosalee often finds solace on the porch.” She sometimes sits alone, sometimes with her step mother Barbara, sometimes others. She will occasionally sip at moonshine or enjoy some snuff. She looks at the moon, visits, gets off her feet, and enjoys the briefest reprieve from her daily grind.
While she was still alive, Rosalee’s mother, Mary Ann, sat out on the porch with Irene, her mother-in-law. “They often rocked in chairs on the porch in silence.” That dynamic is just as common and important as a loud porch where folks are conversing. The porch can function as an escape, and, depending on your mood, that could mean silence or talk.
Porches are magical portals, places for anyone and everyone, where life’s many seasons play out. Porch culture is just one element to Appalachian identity, but it highlights some of the magic that takes place in the home, magic that can be seen in many other Appalachian cultures that aren’t mine. And magic brings us back around to magical realism.
So what is magical realism?
“Magical realism is a genre of literature that depicts the real world as having an undercurrent of magic or fantasy. Within a work of magical realism, the world is still grounded in the real world, but fantastical elements are considered normal in this world. Like fairy tales, magical realism novels and short stories blur the line between fantasy and reality.”
– Masterclass, “What Is Magical Realism? Definition and Examples of Magical Realism in Literature, Plus 7 Magical Realism Novels You Should Read”
One of the authors most associated with magical realism is Gabriel Garcia Marquez, who wrote One Hundred Years of Solitude, which Bobi Conn points to as an impactful book for her as a writer. Other well-known magical realism writers include Salman Rushdie, Yann Martel, Haruki Murakami, Toni Morrison, Franz Kafka, and Isabel Allende.
So what do you see in a work of magical realism? For one, ghosts or spirits (returning to where this essay started). The boundary between life and death is permeable, blending reality with moments of bizarre ecstasy from other realms, bridging time and space. They offer a brief interaction with the spirit world where our characters discover things about themselves, about the land, and history.
I asked Bobi Conn if she believed in ghosts. She answered,
“Yes, I believe that the world is much more multi-layered than what we are able to perceive. We know that our minds filter out things, so we aren’t bombarded by information. Our minds tell us the story of what’s going on around us based on narratives formed at a young age.”
She added that we can’t see certain light waves– there are things beyond our perception. And this is a key feature of magical realism: connecting with and conveying the unknowable. Like what happens after death.
The ghosts in Kentucky Route Zero function differently than the ghosts in A Woman in Time. In the novel, ghosts serve as mental/emotional/spiritual supports to the living, providing Rosalee with much-needed love and wisdom. Or, in one instance, haunting the terrible men in her life. In the video game, ghosts interact with our characters not to support them on their journeys, but to make us question the line between life and death; they serve as metaphors– ghosts are old memories, they are things lost or forgotten, they are dead communities, and encounters with ourselves.
In A Woman in Time, our protagonist, Rosalee, often feels her dead mother and aunt’s presence, as they guide her through fearful and ordinary times alike. “It seemed like Mary Ann and Bessie had walked alongside her even as she cleaned the chicken coop, or called the cows, or drew water from the well.”
Sometimes Rosalee’s ghosts haunt others, like Samuel’s abusive brother Joseph. “Joseph drank on the porch until he began snoring, his sleep fitful and haunted by ghosts of women he had never known. Rosalee welcomed them all.”
Rosalee weaves prayer dolls, containing specific prayers for someone’s health and wellbeing. Ghosts interact with her in these moments too.
“Rosalee went inside and wove a prayer doll by the fire, whispering the words to protect Bethany from Joseph’s heavy hands and careless heart. A moving shadow kept catching her eye as it flitted around Barbara’s chair, and Rosalee nearly told Barbara to go rest now, but held her tongue. When she threw the doll into the ash-covered embers from the night before, blue flames leapt into the air and devoured the doll, consuming Rosalee’s words and intention.”
While sewing, she hears her mother’s advice on stitching, “And Rosalee would smile at her mother’s words, alone but not truly.” There’s a magic to being alone, but not feeling alone. In Bobi’s favorite mountain memory about the curled leaves, she believes what she discovered was put there by her ancestors for her to find. Alone but not truly.
To capture spiritual experiences, magical realism allows for ambiguity (on many topics, not just spiritual matters). Ambiguity, when overdone, can be confusing, but applied just right, readers witness the expansiveness of our universe. Psychedelic.
Following Rosalee into the woods on her family’s property, we meet someone who feels like a ghost– Anna. When Rosalee first meets Anna, the little girl is picking blueberries– six or seven years old. Anna talks seldom, and Rosalee knows nothing about her, even years later. She’s like a unicorn– a mystery. At times, the reader isn’t sure if she’s even real.
When I spoke with Bobi Conn about Anna, we together explored magical realism’s fluid line between reality and dream-state. Bobi told me, “Anna is supposed to be unclear.” Is she Rosalee’s fractured self or is she real? Every time Rosalee encounters Anna, she has either had a tonic or has been hurt. Is she hallucinating? She also experiences severe postpartum depression after her first child’s birth. How might that impact her perception of the world around her? What does it mean to become a wife and mother when your brain is still developing?
Through Anna, as a persona seemingly untouched by life, Rosalee experiences pieces of childhood long gone– the freedom of exploring the forest and finding oneself there. Though an enigma, Anna gives Rosalee moments of peace amidst a chaotic life out of her control. In this sense, if we choose to read Anna as a ghost, we can see the magic of togetherness between two women. Solidarity grows with their bond and thus we see how ghosts in A Woman in Time are like lifeboats afloat a raging sea– something to grab and hang on to while swimming against the current, whether they be spirits or mirages.
In the Prologue of Kentucky Route Zero, we first encounter ghosts in the basement of Equus Oils, a gas station where we try to find directions to 5 Dogwood Drive. The gas station owner asks us to go down to the basement and get the lights back on after a power outage. There, we find a small group of people seated at a circular table in the dark, playing a game. Conway, our protagonist, tries to interact with them but is ignored multiple times. They talk amongst themselves about the rules of the game, telling us a bit about the game we are playing.
“I still don’t understand how you win,” one character asks. The answer: “Roll the twenty-sided die once for each player, and refer to Appendix C: Table of Psychogeographical Anxiety/Address Correlations. Locate the resulting street addresses on the roadmap and move each player marker to the appropriate location.” Another character continues, “I don’t think you can win. It says on the box it’s a tragedy.”
In the complete darkness, we are prompted to pick up the glowing twenty-sided die the characters at the table dropped. When we get the power back on again, we find the basement empty of the people playing the game. Disappeared without a trace, except for the die.
When we meet Weaver Marquez, who knows the way to the Zero, Conway helps her set up an old TV. She asks him which parent didn’t allow him to watch television growing up. He answers, “Ma thought she heard ghosts in the static.” After he sets up the TV, the images on screen captivate him: a few horses in front of a dilapidated barn with a barn quilt. He falls into a trance. We are to remember this scene– a blue-gray night, fog rolling in, surrounding these horses. When Conway remerges, Weaver has disappeared.
Our next stop is Elkhorn Mine, where Weaver told us to find Shannon, her relation, who might be able to help him find the Zero. As we navigate the dark tunnels of the mine with Shannon, looking for the onramp to the Zero, we encounter strange figures standing in the foreground, illuminated by the sparks flying off the electric tram. Shannon tells us that the miners used to have to pay just to run the fans and lights down there. We find a tunnel that used to be underwater. Conway asks her what happened. Shannon tells us,
“Some careless miner or some unattended machine bored through into an underground lake. The water came in pretty fast, and a lot of folks got trapped in the tunnels. I only heard parts of how it went from there– sanitized for the bereaved… you know how these big companies are. But there was gossip too. The trapped miners couldn’t get the pumps going because the power was rationed, so they shut all the lights off. But even then it wasn’t enough. So I guess it was dark when they…”
When we encounter these ghosts in the tunnels, we know who they are. As a body, not individually. We know a bit of their story. Their haunting presence is a reminder of histories of exploitation. In A Woman in Time, one of Rosalee’s brothers dies in a mining accident. She received regular letters from him and his family in the coal town. In one they write, “The coal bosses [are] bringing in more hired guns to discourage the workers from organizing, and the women at home grappled with this new worry, this new threat of violence.”
Later in the videogame, we find a pile of old helmets from the power company– the other exploitative force in Kentucky Route Zero– with a sign that reads,
“We claim these helmets in the name of the folks who wore them and we place them here in their memory but also as a spit in the greedy green eye of that power company who bought up our old mine and traded our brothers’ and sisters’ safety for a little more yield but only yielded 28 good men and women dead when the walls collapsed and the tunnels filled with water. Their lungs were black but now they’re washed clean and full of water too and swept through hidden tunnels into some awful cave we never will find and so we guess the water buried them for us so let this here be the marker for their grave. And if any son of a bitch from that power company wants to take back these helmets as company property just you try it and see what will happen.”
Ghosts in the game also exist in technology. On our way to the Zero, we stop in a cave system, where we meet Donald, the builder of a special computer called Xanadu. As Donald tells us of how his device is broken and falling into disrepair, he explains,
“Well, I have my own ghosts. And I keep them in there. In Xanadu. It’s running on that glorious, dusty machine. Take a look if you’d like. Too late to do anything but smoke and reminisce, anyway… far too late to do anything…”
In the interlude “Un Pueblo de Nada”, we first encounter the town where 5 Dogwood Drive is located. Emily, a producer at the local television station, describes the place, “But everything is a ghost around here, these days. It’s a ghost town with people still living in it, against all reason!”
There we meet two men working on a radio, calling it the Ghost Box. The radio picks up strange sounds, interpreted by the men as voices from beyond the grave. One heard “Dogwood” in the static. Ben says, “The ghost voices don’t really come out until you play back the recording later.” Bob adds, “They only exist in recordings, like a copy without an original. A mirror reflecting something that isn’t in the room.”
He continues,
“Ghosts, though… we need a whole new framework to think about ghosts.” Bob asks, “So the ghosts speak and we can’t hear it, but the tape recorder can hear it? Is that right?” Ben answers, “I don’t know. Sometimes I think it’s more like the recording itself is a ghost. Like that’s what ghosts are. Recordings of events that didn’t happen. When something keeps leaving new marks even after it’s gone. False memories.”
Once the broadcast starts again, we realize that the program isn’t actually on air; the signal is being blocked by Weaver.
We learn that our friend Weaver Marquez is actually haunting the TV station. The producer, Emily, thinks, “So if Weaver is a ghost, by some agreed upon definition and mechanics, that means WEVP is haunted.” She continues, “I guess there are good ghosts and bad ghosts. Like spiders– good in the garden, bad in the shower.”
Rita asks, “What’s wrong?” Emily answers, “It’s her– Weaver.” Rita says, “Aw, really? Tonight? Sorry about this, Maya.” Maya asks, “What’s going on?” Rita explains, “Local prankster. She jams our signal every once in a while– whenever the stars align!” Emily thinks, Prankster? Not the word I would use… Maya responds, “Damn. So… what do you do about it?” Rita answers, “Just wait until she’s done! We’ve never been able to stop her from jamming us. We don’t even know how she does it. We should be back on in a minute, though. Don’t worry.”
When we finally find 5 Dogwood Drive, ghosts walk alongside us and the people of the small town. They appear as shadow figures, walking about the town just like the living. We can’t interact with them, unlike the other characters we can stop and talk to.
While exploring the town, we hear one of the characters say she was pondering the idea of staying, even as long-time residents were leaving. She tells someone, “I will stay here and care for your ghosts.”
At the very end of the game, the entire town and our characters gather to bury some of the horses, those we saw on the TV at the beginning of the game, lost to the flooding the night before.
A poem is read at the horses’ “remembrance”:
“We all leave town, and call that town a ghost.
What ghosts gave this town breath, and made it home?
And now that breath has gone– we buried it here!
What’s left is not a ghost; it’s just the bones.
Our Neighbors were the best of us– of course!
It’s always so. Our better selves, clear of
Our selves, where we can see their glory glow.
They glow now underground, our friends, with love.
Our Neighbors left us here, though not alone.
Where friends have gone, we hope one day to go.
Here, where we lay our town and friends to rest
may yet some day a new and hale grass grow.”
An indie hymnal is sung softly. And the ghosts are there with them, standing in the crowd, mourning the end of the horses' lives, as well as the life of the town. They are present among us not to scare or haunt, but merely existing on parallel tracks.
What is the container that holds all these ghosts in A Woman in Time and Kentucky Route Zero? In magical realism, it’s often nature. Places take on a familiar but eerie aura, coming to life and interacting with characters in meaningful ways. Nature isn’t personified (like in other fiction sub-genres) as much as it’s deified. The functions of nature are illustrated not in purely scientific terms, but in ways that honor and identify the magical qualities that bind humans to nature.
In Kentucky Route Zero, we interact with our environments and experience a different paradigm where the functionality of technology and architecture do not serve humans, but rather nature itself. All things return. All things decay. The rules of nature decide everything and there is a lack of control surrounding the characters. Nature swallows up human attempts at understanding, so our characters find inventive ways to seek out information, to seek truth using, especially, technology.
In the interlude titled, “Un Pueblo De Nada,” a thunderstorm bears down on us in an old TV station. The weather report comes from Elmo, who uses dyes swirled onto a projector to show weather patterns, like a moving watercolor painting. He predicts that flash floods are imminent. Soon, we see red dye and the text reads, “Roofs are leaking all over town.” During the broadcast, quite suddenly the power goes out and the station goes completely black. In the darkness, hand-scribbled icons appear bright white to direct our focus. As we turn around the room, we see the text: “Incredible how dark it gets in here. If this storm just wiped this town off the map, where would everyone go? That’s this whole town– just whistling along, on its way to the grave.”
With morning light, we see the town for the first time in disrepair– large puddles like lakes everywhere. Under the early sun, seeing daylight for the first time in the whole game, we explore the town, uncovering artifacts that require disentangling– pieces to a larger ecological and sociological story, tied together inextricably. Rather than some pure, separate world, clean and untouched by pollution and consumerism, nature here is made murky by the splashing all around it, yet it is still full of beauty.
As we travel to find The Zero, we stop by a forest, where we hear banjo music playing as we sit at the talons of Julian, a giant eagle as big as a house. Julian belongs to Ezra, the child joining Conway and Shannon on their journey. Julian and Ezra have more of a sibling dynamic than one between pet and owner. The ownership of nature in Kentucky Route Zero is minimal and remarks upon Appalachian connectivity with plants and animals. The horses that we bury at 5 Dogwood Drive were portrayed not as pets, but as Neighbors. Even Conway’s dog, Blue, who participates in the adventure with us, isn’t really his; in the beginning of the game we are given the option to name her and one option is that “she’s just some dog.” Some may read this as a distance placed between characters and animals, but, to me, it more so signifies an air of freedom that people and creatures alike have in this world. We don’t own each other. We’re friends or family. Or neighbors. It’s the declaration that all life has autonomy and that, by being relational, we build trust and work together.
On the Echo River, we stop by a bat sanctuary. Riding the river, we hear stories of the characters we bump into in their attempts at living with and alongside a nature that is changing with pollution and human intervention. There’s a calm acknowledgment of how the ecosystems are changing and thus people’s lives as well. The human beings simply toil onward, navigating shifting waters as best they can, dependent on the river for food, work, and life.
For Rosalee in A Woman in Time, we travel back to a tamer landscape, weather patterns are more predictable, and the ecosystem less polluted than today. The forest on Rosalee’s family farm is a magical place. Nature here is an embrace. It isn’t tainted by man (specifically white man.) In its purity, it offers Rosalee comfort and bliss. Frequently, she runs to the forest in moments of despair or when she needs renewed connection with the land and her deceased family members buried there. When Rosalee gets married to Samuel, she mentally escapes to the forest.
“In her mind, she ran to the woods. There, she found her mama and Aunt Bessie watching, the wildflowers beckoning, the great oaks welcoming. In the forest– in her true home– Rosalee was safe, shielded from the world’s whims and desires, protected by women and wilderness.”
Samuel’s abuse pushes her to the embrace of the forest, but she realizes that even the magic there has limits. “Her kinship with the whispering woods and sacrificial flowers had not taught her how to suffer and had shown her nothing about the cruelty of men.”
When Rosalee goes out to visit her mother and aunt’s graves in the forest, she is a few times lulled into a trance, into a dream-like state.
“Rosalee sank to the ground, resting her face against the cool forest floor. She fell asleep and knew she was dreaming, but could not free herself from the weight of the fragmented images. Mary Ann and Bessie were trying to warn her about something, and Anna appeared at their graves, her basket full of trillium flowers. Rosalee opened her mouth to ask Anna a question, but a young version of her grandmother, Irene took the little girl’s place, and Rosalee watched as her grandmother transformed from a young beauty into a shriveled crone. Her face twisted from an expression of haughty pride into anger, and she whispered curses while casting something into a fire.”
Years later, she returns to the graves of her family, and is surprised to find a 50-foot weeping willow growing there.
“Tears filled her eyes and streamed down her cheeks. Rosalee parted the leafy limbs and hastened into the willow’s embrace, collapsing against the sturdy trunk. When her tears ceased, Rosalee examined the flowers all around her, expecting to find Mary Ann’s ginger had spread wherever the willow had reached, but these blossoms were unlike anything Rosalee had ever seen before. She rubbed her fingers on each side of the milky petal, careful not to press too hard and damage the delicate structure. Their scent lifted from the earth and filled Rosalee’s senses. Overcome with exhaustion, she laid her head on the ground and fell to sleep.”
After these trances, Rosalee wakes, hours having passed, and realizes to her horror how long she’s been gone, away from her farm and children. It’s the same feeling as waking up to a missed alarm. You immediately see the sunlight coming in your window and jolt awake, some part of your asleep self realizing you are late. Samuel finds Rosalee and scolds her for her carelessness. She can’t really account for why or how she lost consciousness, as if she was hypnotized by the woods, tantalized by the rare peace it affords her and lured by a hunger for a life of her own, a life in the forest, untethered to men like Samuel and societies that punish connectivity rather than celebrate it.
In A Woman in Time, nature is a space where women can fantasize, can forage, can heal, and can be. It’s a shielded place. There, the paradigm is one where nature connects all things. The binary expression of man vs nature is laughable here; there is no conquering. While, yes, perhaps a battlefield in some senses, nature strips away the fancy that living is winning and dying is losing.
Life and death here cannot be so reduced as to fit into a war for Man’s soul. We are small; our lives and our deaths are woven into the threads of other lives and deaths. We experience plurality in this paradigm, room for our multitudinous selves constantly living and constantly dying all at once.
In this way, magical realism also plays with memory, cultivating forgetfulness in characters, which reflects the story world back to us in a fog.
From the beginning of Kentucky Route Zero, the characters’ memories are foggy. After we get the power back on at Equus Oils, the attendant offers us to use his computer to find directions to Weaver. When he starts to tell us the password to the computer, he forgets and says,
“The password is… uh… damn. I usually just feel it out. ‘Muscle memory’, you know? It’s kinda long, kinda like a short poem, I think. One of those short poems that really sums it all up.”
Inside at the computer, we compose the poem ourselves:
“The stars drop away.
It’s late.
You just breathe road.”
In Act 2 of the videogame, peeking in on a memory, the player sees Conway sitting and talking with his boss at the antique shop, Lysette. She loses a word she needs and Conway tells her it will come back. Lysette responds, “Maybe. I’m not sure anymore. It seems inevitable there will start to be words that I lose forever.”
Conway experiences memory loss throughout the game, however, there is a partial explanation. After Shannon and Conway have an accident in the Elkhorn Mine, Shannon detours our main journey to the Zero and takes us to a Dr. Truman’s house, where Conway’s injured leg is taken care of. Dr. Truman explains the side effects of the medicine he administered, “Typically, we see daydreaming, deja vu, pensiveness, fugue states, irregular perception of time… about fifteen percent of patients report a generalized sensation of lateness.”
In Act 4 of the game, we ride the Echo River– like the Zero, a mysterious place. Junebug says early on, “The water has a peculiar way of making a person forgetful.”
Conway later laughs,
“Ha ha. Damned noisy river… It’s just that thing about… what was it… when you walk through a door? When you go into the kitchen for something, and as soon as you pass from one room into another, you forget what you wanted. You have to walk back out just to remember! Like you left a part of your brain behind. Hey, I wonder if I could follow that brain-crumb trail all the way back to the room I was born in…”
Still in Act 4, we meet a gas station attendant on the Echo River, who tells us, “I’ve learned to cherish it. There’s dignity in being forgotten, letting the crowd flow around you unspoiled.”
At the Radvansky Center on the Echo River, we watch security footage, but learn that we are actually seeing some sort of experimental test with Shannon as the subject. One of the observers of the experiment talk to the other about a part of the memory test,
“Watercolor paintings already have the quality of a half-remembered dream, anyway. Like they’re inviting you to forget them, or somebody else already forgot them for you; like a mama-bird feeding her chicks cotton candy.”
At the WEVP TV station, later in the night, we play as Emily. Shelves full of tapes stand in one corner of the studio, and Emily struggles to find the tape they are looking for. She thinks,
“We should put this all in chronological order. Although I guess it’s hard to remember, sometimes, the order of things… and some of these tapes were made at the same time– or we started one video and then started another in the middle, and then came back later, and… Time is out of joint. It’s like sweeping a beach.”
Emily thinks about the end of her community. “I just hope our ending isn’t so dramatic. Maybe we can just decline peacefully into irrelevance, and then one day stop, completely unnoticed. That sounds nice.”
Memory in Kentucky Route Zero is blurred, revealing to us as we play how insignificant we are in the game. Upon first playing, you struggle to find your bearings, as time and space jump around. You're swimming up to your neck in some tangents– random branches of the story that don’t really get us closer to the Zero– then suddenly you can’t touch the bottom anymore.
The game, in a way, obscures itself, playing with our memory too, as the player. We dive deep into conversations with many different characters along our journey, and, as more accumulates, we start to forget. And as we try to hold more and more information, more leaks out until, at some point depending on how patient you are, you throw your hands up and say, “Okay, fine! I give up.” Give up on remembering everything. Let it all blur together. Moments stand out that are meaningful to us, but a lot is forgotten. Like some of its characters, the game seemingly wants us to forget it– to allow it to come and go like water around a rock.
This is less so the case in A Woman in Time. Memory, here, is played with for the purpose of showing us how knowledge and ways of being can be lost or gained generation-to-generation.
Rosalee turns to magic often throughout her life in moments where she needs protection. Like her Aunt Bessie taught her, she weaves St. Brigid’s cross, but struggles to remember the songs that accompany the weaving.
“Rosalee tried to recall all the most important songs her mother and aunt used to sing– during a birth, or while straining medicine into jars, or as they threw prayer dolls in the fireplace— but the words jumbled, the melody faded.”
Rosalee dreams of her mother and aunt, trying to warn her of something, but she can’t hear them.
“Rosalee felt like she dreamt all night, but the details of the dream flitted from her mind moments after she awoke.”
In this case, memory is elusive, illuminating some of our insecurities about forgetfulness– how much we want to remember of loved ones who we’ve lost, their stories, and their magic. What if we forget? Wisdom from the ages. That’s heavy. Today, folks inside and out of Appalachia are relearning old practices– reclaiming. Remembering and reconnecting with things like plant medicine.
Knowing plant medicine is itself like magic. Which might be why it’s viewed by specifically Christian males as witchcraft. A lot of the healing work that the Mackenzie women in A Woman in Time practiced is viewed by the men this way, condemned by the preachers and pastors at revivals.
“John wondered about the disorder Mary Ann brought into their marital home, with plants and rocks here and there, as if the outside and inside weren’t all that different, but her sweetness made it clear she meant no harm and would bring no witchcraft into his home, on purpose or otherwise. Still, he told Mary Ann to take down the herbs she was drying anytime his father came to the farm, and she hung them back up only when Haman was well on his way back home.”
But his patience doesn’t last too long.
“John had grown more suspicious of superstition and anything he didn’t understand, and he even seemed displeased anytime Mary Ann or Bessie talked about their dreams and what they might mean.”
In Act 4 of Kentucky Route Zero, we meet Cate, the captain of the ferryboat and herbal medicine practitioner. When we first meet her on The Mucky Mammoth, Cate asks Shannon,
“How’s that cold, river spray treating you? I thought I saw you squinting, it’s “hard water,” you know, hard on the eyes. It still irritates mine a little, and I’m piloting a tugboat through it six nights a week. Don’t be too shy to close them in public. Your eyes, I mean. People will just assume you’re thoughtful. You need tea… So, greening goat’s foot, definitely. Peppermint, dried spring agaricus, bitter hedgehog, and split gill powder.”
Mushrooms are their own category of plant medicine. They possess a unique magic that can reveal ties between living and nonliving things. Mushrooms offer a symbolic vessel for consciousness expansion. They are links to other worlds. And to our own.
In his TedTalk “Could Fungi Actually Be the Key to Humanity’s Survival?”, David Andrew Quist explains,
“What I’m talking about is the way that fungi have been central to the evolution of life on the planet. That virtually all life has a fungal backstory.”
He talks about how many billions of years fungi have been around and how they allowed for our evolution.
“The algae would actually escape the waters and come onto land and evolve into land plants, but only by partnering with fungi first as its root system. Soils would begin to form as fungi ate rock and broke down to make the nutrients available. So you have this opportunity for new life to spring up. As a result, the evolution of plants would explode across the planet. Which would oxygenate the atmosphere and allow for the evolution of more complex lifeforms, like us humans.”
Despite its importance to our survival, our knowledge of fungi is incredibly limited, even with modern technology. Quist goes on,
“Their ubiquity is why we know so little about fungi… We know perhaps 5% of all the fungi– some 3 million species that are thought to exist in the world today.”
There is a mystique to mushrooms, one that draws us closer. There’s something dangerous about interacting with them, yet also full of potential for good use. It’s an act of faith to engage. Thus, mushroom hunting becomes more than simply a foraging expedition; it’s a curiosity toward the universe.
In Kentucky Route Zero, the ferryboat, The Mucky Mammoth, stops at a grove, where Cate and Ezra go mushroom hunting. Cate says,
“My mushroom hunting mentor told me, it’s useless to pretend to know mushrooms; they escape your erudition; the more you know them, the less sure you feel about identifying them.”
Mushrooms escape our definitions of them, like sand slipping through someone’s fingers. Not only can they have a surreal effect on us but also on our very understanding of them. And this can be dangerous– even fatal. Cate tells Ezra about the death cap mushroom.
“It’s killed a lot of people, this little mushroom– including a few Roman Emperors. It's a revolutionary! Ha ha. Even the Buddha died from eating a mushroom, when he was very old. That’s just what they do: clear away old things, make room for new things.”
Quist explains in his TedTalk,
“Fungi are also regenerative. Their ability to decompose is important for the planet to say the least. Because fungi eat death and give it back to life as nutrients to start the cycle anew.”
A process like that is magical.
At the end of the hunt, Cate reveals her “haul” to Ezra.
(Cate takes the spotted brown cap out of her bag.) “Okay, this one is called bitter hedgehog, and it’s on my list. It’s great for nausea, which is basically the number one complaint of the pregnant women I treat. It tastes kind of like black pepper… It’s okay. I let it dry out so it’s really tough, and they just chew on it like bubble gum. (Cate takes the bundle of amber caps from her bag.) These ones are really cool. See how they kind of glow a little? It’s not enough to find your way in the dark or anything, but still pretty amazing. Anyway, I make tea out of them; pretty good for headaches.”
Ezra thanks Cate for taking him “mushroom picking,” but Cate offers a different understanding. “Mushroom hunting. You can pick apples because they’re right there out in the open. Mushrooms hide. You have to hunt for them.”
Mushrooms, as well as herbs, are tools often wielded by women, primarily for healing. Cate is a birth doula. Rosalee’s aunt, Bessie, was a healer. They can alter our perspective, and alter our memory.
In A Woman in Time, mushrooms show up while Rosalee is in the forest one day. She stumbles upon a circle of white mushrooms, but before she can touch them, Anna’s voice calls out, “Mama says not to touch those.” She calls them a “fairy ring”;
“The fairies don’t like it when we pick them, and they visit your house and make you sick after you fall asleep.”
Moments like this demonstrate how helpful superstitions can be when dealing with fungi and other plant life.
Magic and superstition, often uttered in the same breath, are connected in the spider web of Appalachian thinking– something Bobi Conn and I talked a lot about. I asked Bobi if she was ever superstitious. She told me the world around us is much more connected than we think and that, “It’s good luck to believe in superstition.” Why? It’s useful to be open, to prime ourselves for the outcome we want to experience.
Superstition shows up a few times in A Woman in Time. Aunt Bessie helps her sister Mary Ann give birth, but beforehand, she “... swept the corners with her hand broom and sprinkled salt along the walls for protection, as Granny had always done.” Rosalee eventually meets Bethany, her to-be sister in law, marrying Samuel’s abusive younger brother, Joseph. But Bethany doesn’t have a dress. Before giving Bethany her old wedding dress, Rosalee hesitates, “... wondering if the dress might bring bad luck.”
In Kentucky Route Zero, we stumble upon superstitions often. On the way to the Zero, our truck breaks down on the side of the road next to a downed tree all tangled in telephone wires. While we wait for the tow, Ezra, passes time by telling the future with twigs. He explains to Conway, “We can tell the future with this little tree branch. It’s pretty easy. We just break off all the little sticks on each section and count through the different things that could happen.” Conway asks how he will travel in the future and Ezra foresees a new truck. But Ezra ultimately concludes, “These other branches are too bare. Don’t worry about it too much. It’s just a bunch of sticks.”
Yet science and superstition don’t have to exist separately; in Appalachia, for example, the two are often blended, serving those who carry the knowledge well. Technologies manifest out of this combination, and, especially in Kentucky Route Zero, create this trippy, unique experience of engagement. At one point, technology and fungi fuse together and become one.
On our way to the Zero, we stumble upon an underground cave system. There, a large fire burns in the center of the cave. When we approach the fire, we find that, “a pile of discarded electronics burns steadily in the center of the chamber.” Around the fire are a few scattered people, one of whom, Donald, we stop and talk to. He tells us about a computer he built– Xanadu. But the machine is decaying.
“As the mold accumulated on the circuitry, Xanadu blossomed for a moment into something holy and enchanted… then all the charm was broken.”
Shannon, being a tech-wiz, tries to fix Xanadu for Donald. But the blending of hardware and fungi is so interwoven that the operation is finicky at best. Junebug, Johnny, Conway, and Ezra offer their own kind of help with the task.
Junebug says, “Time for some percussive maintenance...” (Conway thumps the side of the machine with his palm.) Shannon jumps in, “Oh- I have my portable degausser with me! Old systems like this one can build up a remnant magnetic field that sort of warps everything along whatever pattern it’s settled into, you know? The degausser clears that up by suddenly shaking the magnetic field around until it’s uniform again. That’s how I like to think about it, anyway: like shaking a snowglobe. Ha ha. Worth a shot.” Finally the loud static noise silences and Xanadu’s screen goes blank. We see the words “Hall of the mountain king”. More gibberish. Glowing lines, creating structures that look one moment like caves and the next like buildings. Shannon says, “Well… okay.” Xanadu’s text box reads, “Premature end of file. Press any key to quit.” Junebug comments, “This is a lost cause… what a piece of junk!” The screen goes black.
Once they eventually fix Xanadu, they explore the device’s software– a program that mapped and described the many tunnels of the cave system. We follow the recorded version of an event that took place between Donald, Lula, and Joseph– the gas station attendant we met before. Together, they go out into the tunnels, and soon discover “the strangers”-- a group of mysterious, unknown, skeleton people scraping mold off the tunnel walls. The group scatters, finding each other again, deep in the caves. When we reconnect with Lula, she tells us about how she fled the scene of the strangers and ended up spending some time on the Zero.
Lula explains, “Joseph, it’s… it’s different than we’ve heard. It’s like a real place: they pick up garbage, they deliver mail, they go to work and to church… My most vivid memory is a parade of images, like a waking dream or a slide lecture I’ll never understand: a television, a scarecrow, a crystal, a feather, a sandwich… a CRT monitor, a bottle… an anchor…”
Here we are finally starting to learn more about the mysterious Zero and how it operates. Fixing the technology was strange, yet productive. The Zero, once we find it, is actually circular. And the way to navigate it is completely by landmarks, such as those mentioned by Lula. However, the places themselves move about, though we stay on the same circular highway. It can be tricky to find one’s way in the circle.
We learned about “the strangers”, too, for the first time– people who have been othered and turned, at least in public imagination, into monsters. Foreign and frightening. They harvest mold, having utility for it– yet to regular people, they seem to be playing with fire. Most of us avoid mold when we see it; we only engage with it to get rid of it. Due to the health risks, one has to be careful. To some, watching a group of people without protective suits on harvest mold at close range is like seeing something unnatural. People who play with fungi are strange. Including healers to a certain extent.
This is one example of the surrealism of Kentucky Route Zero, when it comes to the interactions characters have with technology– a lot of it old and broken.
At the beginning of Act 4, we find ourselves on an old ferryboat– apparently, a broken one. A new character to us, Will, reads a manual in an attempt to fix the issue.
The manual reads, “5.4. Context Backlash. General wear on the GESTURAL GEAR MOUNTING APPARATUS (5A-1) may result in an undesirable play between teeth in the CONTEXT AND HISTORY STATE MACHINE gears, causing stuttering, slippage, resetting, skipping–”
Will says, “Hm. Guess it could be ‘slippage’...” Manual reads, “If left unresolved, gear slop can gradually throw limbs out of alignment, blend MOTIONS, and decontextualize GESTURES. See also sections 1.8 General Troubleshooting, and 5.3 Gesture Context.”
Will chooses, “Troubleshooting, okay…” Manual 1.8 General Troubleshooting reads, “Technicians of sufficient TALENT and EXPERIENCE may skip this section. General troubleshooting techniques include: hammering with something plastic until the resonance becomes apparent; tapping the exposed metal with a wrench; or applying a cold washcloth and watching for changes in stability.”
On the Mucky Mammoth ferryboat there is a video room, containing a collection of tapes. When Shannon goes to investigate, Cate warns, “Watch out that VCR doesn’t take your hand off, though! It’s untrustworthy.”
Though fussy and ornery, technology in the game also offers chances to play and explore odd digital landscapes. Sometimes these interactions become their own tangents, like when young Ezra plays a computer game at the Equus Oils station. The only two options are “Psychotherapist” or “Sports Medicine Professional 1973.” Ezra chooses to play “Sports Medicine Professional 1973.”
The computer reads off, “February 1973. Status: Senior. GPA: 3.8. Affect: Bored.”
We can choose between studying, hitting the bar, or exploring the forest. If you choose the bar, the computer reads, “Two for one domestics. Somebody has a rifle in their truck. Late night target practice in a field, a few hours in lock-up, stern warnings, and new friends.”
“March 1973. Status: Senior. GPA: 3.8. Affect: Pensive.”
We can again choose between studying, hitting the bar, or exploring the forest. If you select “study”, the computer reads, “Sudden or repeated hyperextension of the big toe can cause a sprain in the ligaments around the joint, a painful injury known as turf toe.”
“April 1973. Status: Senior. GPA: 3.85. Affect: Pensive.”
We can again choose between studying, hitting the bar, or exploring the forest. If you select the forest, the computer reads, “Thick tree coverage soaks up every vapor of light pollution. The skies are uncomplicated, black and white, mumbling stars. An owl decimates a caravan of mice.”
“May 1973. Status: Hiker. GPA: 3.85. Affect: Pensive.” The computer then reads, “It’s time to make a decision.” We are given the options: graduate, hitchhike across the country, or live in a tree.
If you select hitchhiking, the computer says, “The road is dry. Road-dirt encrusts the nostril. Settle inland, eventually, frustrated. Score: Pensive.” We then exit the game.
Poetic at times, these pieces of technology, while broken and unusual, are representations of those who created them, capturing the essence of Appalachian ingenuity, resourcefulness, and intelligence.
From What You Are Getting Wrong About Appalachia,
“Again and again Appalachia is relegated to the past tense: “out of time” and out of step with any contemporary present, much less a progressive future.”
This is one reason why I love this video game so much– it presents a modern Appalachia with technology, even if often broken. Appalachia is full of inventive people who have used technology throughout history. The stereotype that Appalachians are locked in a primitive history ignores the very real engineering taking place in rural areas all the time.
A controversial but historical example of this is moonshining. While dispelling the stereotype that all Appalachians are alcoholics and moonshiners, it’s also important to acknowledge the impacts of alcoholism on Appalachian communities.
Control of alcohol in the mountains has been a hot issue since the beginning of United States history. In the 1780s & 90s, Alexander Hamilton, the first United States Secretary of the Treasury, decided to tax whiskey– something that mountain folk especially did not appreciate. According to Ramp Hollow: The Ordeal of Appalachia by Steven Stoll,
“Hamilton marched into the mountains to enforce the authority of federal law. Yet in a larger sense he marched as Political Economy personified, headed for a confrontation with Agrarian Autonomy. He favored a national debt because he expected that the credit earned by paying it off would attract investment and advance the good name of the United States. He believed that nations form when citizens assume a collective debt and work together like bees in a hive to pay it down.”
Frustrated by a nebulous code of laws around whiskey production, people bucked against Hamilton’s centralizing efforts. Take a look at some of the rules:
“Those who made whiskey needed to paint the words DISTILLER OF SPIRITS on their houses so agents of the state could ride into a village and quickly identify them. They needed to make an entry in writing at a central office three days before distilling. No one could remove whiskey from any distillery at night. All stills needed to be inspected with the liquor percolating in situ, not after the fact. Officers needed to brand each cask with a serial number to mark its origins, quantity, and proof, then collect the tax and write a receipt. Only then could a cask travel the roads and rivers to market. Congress piled on the penalties for fugitive stills and noncompliance. Officers who came across unmarked goods on the turnpike had the authority to seize all casks, horses, cattle, carriages, harnesses, tackling, boats, and the full value of the cargo. The penalty for erasing or changing serial numbers was forfeiture and a fine equal to the highest market price. Other infractions carried a hundred-dollar fine– an impossible sum. Anyone operating a single still under fifty gallons did not have to keep records or mark his house, but he was otherwise subject to the law.”
This led to the Whiskey Rebellion, which was suppressed in 1794 under the Washington administration, demonstrating the newly formed country’s central power.
The history of alcohol in Appalachia would be incomplete without Prohibition, which is when we meet Rosalee.
In A Woman in Time, we don’t see or spend time at the moonshine stills, as they are the domain of Samuel, not Rosalee. However, the evidence of shining is all over: mason jars filling the cabinets, rolled up money bills stored under the floorboards, and drunken men stumbling about. Samuel, Rosalee’s husband, is very proud of his moonshining work. Partnering with Rosalee’s father, they sell their moonshine in the city, eventually rising to the point of having connections in Chicago. But the tensions between Rosalee’s measured, calm father and her cocky, aggressive husband reach a fever pitch, resulting in a dramatic change in the family (I won’t spoil it.) Later in the story, Samuel is arrested and taken to jail, leaving Rosalee with his abusive brother, Joseph. She is forced to walk a tightrope between keeping Joseph happy and not seeming too friendly, especially in front of Samuel when they go to visit him in jail. Joseph is not the moonshiner his brother is and ends up depleting their stock noticeably.
Rosalee’s relationship with the moonshine is special, though she doesn’t touch the still and doesn’t feel it’s her job. She takes some of the moonshine Samuel produces and adds different kinds of plants, herbs, and fruits to make tonics and tasty drinks. At first, Samuel indulges it saying that the men in the city might buy some for their wives– anything fruity being a woman’s drink. But later, Samuel loses some of his congeniality and sees it as an annoyance. In the end, they are his undoing.
In Kentucky Route Zero, we visit the Hard Times Whiskey Distillery, located in an abandoned church, reclaimed by a strange group of glowing skeletons, who run the Distillery. Immediately, the skeleton we interact with who gives us a tour of the facility tries to hire Conway and Shannon, though they never express interest in joining the team. Conway asks how big the facility is. The skeleton replies,
“When Mr. Bishop founded this operation, it was only about 1,800 square feet, and half of that or more was occupied by camouflage to keep the law out. Hiding out in the back of an old church purifying spirits by handmade fire. A kettle, and a dream.”
But, it seems this business has a way of trapping people and turning them into something else- skeletons, “the strangers” from the caves. They’re different, separate from everyone else. Locked away in the distillery. The regular people we meet throughout the game will occasionally mention the strangers in passing, trailing subtle judgements for working with alcohol.
There are unspoken threats of violence at the Distillery. Earlier in the game, we pass a car wreck on the highway. Turns out, it was a whiskey delivery from the distillery. When Shannon asks about the driver, the skeleton responds,
“Well, the dust is still clearing, of course. Perhaps he closed his eyes a moment. Or simply hit a curve too devilish. I do pity ill-fated Miguel– he was good company, and slow to anger. But, if we’re speaking confidentially… Well, with all that lost product to be repaid– bourbon and glass dashed across the interstate, and a few casks too– we’re all just thankful he had no… next of kin.”
At the end of the tour, Conway is hired. Shannon tries to stop it, not wanting Conway to work for these kinds of people, but it’s done. When they reject his offer, the skeleton explains,
“And I’m afraid that leaves us with a delicate problem. As I indicated, this is the top-shelf stuff you’re drinking now. It isn’t cheap. If it’s not your first shift drink… well, and there’s the matter of this tour just now. My time and experience are billed at a premium! This is not good for you, my friend. You’re in quite deep, by my back-of-the-envelope estimations. Well, we have that in common, I suppose. All of us. Yes, I’m afraid you’ll have to work this off, somehow. It’s just the way of it.”
He gives Conway time to “settle his affairs” before tomorrow, for his first day. Later that evening, along the Echo River, Conway and Shannon stop to meet someone, but soon Conway is gone. We see three glowing skeletons, the same from the Distillery, floating in a canoe, off and away. We are to assume one of them was Conway– gone, now, never to be seen again.
We see here how the Distillery traps people in labor contracts, but it also forces people into a corner where they must make unfortunate deals to survive– deals that hurt other people.
In Act II of the game, we find ourselves in a bar. There’s a man behind the counter, Harry. And a few patrons seated nearby. They converse, largely ignoring our presence, except to occasionally look at us with suspicion– being a stranger to them. The casual, small-talk conversation is tediously drawn out, punctuated by sporadic mentions of the patrons’ unpaid bills. Harry promises, “There’ll be a reckoning.” When one of the characters asks what he means, he replies,
“It’s gone, the money’s all gone! I let you sponges soak up so many free drinks now I can’t even stock the whiskey without striking a deal.” Pearl says, “Harry… what kind of deal?” Harry responds, “It doesn’t matter.” Lawrence comments, “You can’t blame us. Harry, we’re just a little short from time to time.” Harry says, “Just leave, Pearl. Just trust me.” Pearl says (worried) “Okay. I’m leaving. Are you sure…” Harry confirms, “I’m sure. You don’t deserve this.”
Alluding to some near-future danger, Harry says, “He’ll be here soon. The boy from Hard Times. There’ll be a reckoning.” Lawrence comments, “Harry, our debt’s not to the distillery.” Harry replies, “It is now. I traded it. I sold it. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry…”
The act ends there, abruptly. The threat of unknown violence hanging above us. Just like the threat of violence in A Woman in Time, hovering above Rosalee all her adult life. Whereas in A Woman in Time, the violence at times can be graphic, the videogame’s violence is hidden; it takes place off screen, whispered of via implication– what’s unspoken between the lines.
Neither kind of violence takes on a magical quality, though at times mysterious. I asked Bobi Conn about how she felt writing about the abuse Rosalee faces. She told me it’s important to describe abuse in real detail and questioned whether the scenes came across as too gratuitous or unnecessary.
Then, I asked Bobi, “How did you walk the line between presenting a realistic portrait of abuse that rural women, especially in that era, face with maneuvering around Appalachian stereotypes?” She answered,
“Part of it is having other characters (male) who aren’t abusive. As horrible as the impact can be of cruel men on women and children, I know lots of men who aren’t that way. It’s important to show those characters (like Michael and Rosalee’s father).”
She continues,
“Also, one of the things I subtly tried to do was show that these male characters are enacting some of the cruelty that was typical of the day– they weren’t acting as they did because they were inbred hicks without exposure to the outside world. They are acting as they did because they were empowered to do so. It was not a function of gender or geography, but of power dynamics.”
Writing about violence in Appalachia is tough, but necessary work and extends beyond individuals to encompass the larger region. From Confronting Appalachian Stereotypes,
“Depictions of the southern mountains as a violent subculture gained currency in the popular and scholarly accounts of Appalachian feuds that were written at the end of the nineteenth century and at the beginning of the twentieth. In reality, feuding violence was far more episodic and usually less dramatic than portrayed by these writers.”
The region as a whole was seen as a violent, dangerous place for many reasons. Some tried to rationalize that perceived violence by pointing to Appalachians’ backwardness. Again, from Confronting Appalachian Stereotypes,
“A corollary to the assumption of the geographical location of the feud country was the assumption of the primitiveness of its population. The big myth was that feuds represented a cultural expression of earlier, Old World, behaviors and antagonisms because the Appalachian Mountains were settled predominantly by Scotch-Irish immigrants who carried feuding traditions with them from the Old World. But this rests on dubious historical evidence.”
The essential point made by some writers, including Bobi Conn, is that Appalachia is seen as a violent place, but it is not inherently more or less violent than anywhere else in America. Redefining the violence seen in the region is crucial to both insiders and outsiders wanting to understand Appalachian history. And magical realism can be a useful tool with redefining those kinds of ingrained images.
Together, we have explored magical realism in two Kentucky texts, as well as Appalachian cultures, histories, and ways of being. And now I return to one of my original questions: Is Appalachia magical realism? Regardless of the magical spirit of the place, Appalachia as a concept and as a people is well-served by magical realism, full of contradictions, opportunities, mysteries, and a special kind of love. All told, Appalachia as a place tends to not fit into binaries, including “is” and “is not”. And so, Appalachia is and is not magical realism. It is and is not technological, superstitious, haunted, drunk, and violent. Appalachia is too varied a place to be singularly defined. Even by magic.