James Still Questions and Activities

The following classroom discussion questions and writing activities are adapted from the teacher’s guide to the 1997 KET documentary James Still’s River of Earth. The entire guide is also available as a downloadable PDF file. See our online ITV catalog for a description of the documentary and a schedule of airings on our in-school instructional channel.

TO DISCUSS

• The place James Still called home—the mountains of Eastern Kentucky—shaped all his work. What does your place mean to you? How has it affected you and your family? Think about geography, work, recreation, customs. Do you live on a river? in a city? on a farm? Have you lived other places? How does that influence who you are?
  


• Still was originally from Alabama; Kentucky was his chosen home. Is there somewhere else you feel more at home than where you live now? Why?
  


• How does Mr. Still’s name fit his personality and his life? How does your name fit you? (If you don’t know what your name means, look it up in a dictionary of names.)
  


• James Still wrote and published for more than 70 years, but he didn’t get rich, have a book on the best-seller list, or appear on Oprah. While widely read and widely traveled, he chose to live far from the center of publishing and celebrity. Does this make him less of a success? What does it mean to be a successful person, to have a successful life? How is recognition different from fame? Could fame interfere with a person’s work?

TO DO

• The way people talk reveals both place and character in James Still’s work. He studied Appalachian speech by being a careful listener and recorder of people around him. Buy or make a pocket notebook to carry with you. Really listen to the people around you: at home, at school, in the grocery, at the ball game. Whenever you hear something that catches your interest—whether it’s what someone says or how they say it—write it down. In class, compare notes and consider the following: Are certain words or phrases associated with your area? Do people talk differently in different settings? Does age make a difference? What can you tell about people by how they speak?
  


• After you’ve been keeping your notebook for several weeks, look back through to see whether you have an entry that seems complete in itself. Could you make a found poem out of it? That is, could you shape it in such a way (by deleting or rearranging words and by adding line breaks) that it looks and reads like a poem?
  


• While the sermon Sim Mobberly preaches in River of Earth is fictional, it is probably based on many such sermons James Still heard as he took part in the life of his community. All of us have memories of essential voices in our lives and can draw on these for writing. Make a list of significant voices in your life. Consider parents, grandparents, siblings, teachers, friends. Now close your eyes and try to hear those people speak in your mind. You might assign each one a topic (What makes you mad? What do you fear? What’s your favorite place?) and then write down what you imagine that person saying about it. Don’t worry if you cross over from remembering things your people actually said to inventing new words for them. Likewise, don’t worry if you leave the person you started with behind and begin to make someone up. That’s one way writers create characters.

TO DISCUSS AND DO

• We hope this program spurs readers new to James Still to add a book by him to their reading list and invites others to get reacquainted. Many of those interviewed in the bookclub special and the documentary single out a book or a story or a poem as having special meaning for them. Is there a story from, say, Pattern of a Man, or a poem in one of the collections, such as The Wolfpen Poems, that speaks to you? What specifically appeals to you? Do particular phrases or passages stand out? Why? Read the work you have selected aloud. In the documentary, James Still and Randy Wilson “perform” the passage from River of Earth containing Sim Mobberly’s sermon. What qualities make this passage particularly appropriate for “performing”?