nonfiction/memoir (5 hrs, 45min) - queer Boston public school teacher relates warm memories of growing up in the (what was then supportive and less-impoverished) community of Charleston, West Virginia, and some ways in which her once love-filled neighborhood has changed. CW/TW: loss of friends/family to suicide; alcoholism; racist remarks; uncertainty in coming out as queer to certain acquaintances.

great storytelling, showing so much good in people, at least in the past, and brings up a lot of emotions I didn't expect. Avashia and her partner also make a really cute couple ("autonomous Jackson"! 😂 ) - Would definitely recommend this one. ( )

In a series of vignettes the author describes growing up as a South Asian girl in a small town in West Virginia, something quite different from other narratives of the Indian American experience, which are often situated in large, diverse urban areas. She describes and questions the complex, and sometimes uncomfortable, observations about being cared for, scrutinized, minimized, and harassed by neighbors, classmates, and other members of the WV majority population. Her relationships with her family are also complicated and multi layered. Recommended for all libraries. ( )

Neema Avashia is a Boston teacher who I know through her activism and her Twitter account. In this short collection of essay-length memoirs she reflects on growing up in West Virginia and her present day life in India. Her family emigrated to India as part of a small but significant group of Indian ex-pats who worked in West Virginia's chemical industry. Avashia describes the warm memories of white West Virginians and how the Appalachian and Indian cultural traditions became commingled in her childhood. This is contrasted with how those same white West Virginians who helped her family on arrival support the MAGA ideology that discriminates against immigrants and LGBTQ people. Nevertheless, Avashia fully embraces her West Virginia identity and heritage and makes the case that even if people like her are only a small portion of West Virginia's population that they are nevertheless fully West Virginian. ( )

Neema Avashia's Another Appalachia is another of the memoirs I've been reading during Pride month. Usually I read mostly fiction, but I wanted to spend some time absorbing people's stories as they understand and speak them.

As the title suggests, Avashia's essay-memoirs have as much to do with growing up in Appalachia as they do with her lesbian identity. Her portrait of West Virginia is fascinating, tracking the economic ups and downs of the region, the regular harassment she encountered as a child, and the ways neighbors who'd lived in the area for multiple generations found common ground with the small community of Indian immigrants who came to the area. These aren't all "kumbaya stories," but there are moments of connection—and not just moments, relationships that have lasted for decades—that created a strong sense of community in the neighborhood she grew up in. Some of those relationships have survived the Trump years, some haven't, and her reflections on those changes are both moving and frustrating.

Another Appalachia offers an LGBTQ perspective that will be new to most readers. It also offers a vision of Appalachian life that challenges stereotypes and assumptions about the region.

I received a free electronic review copy of this title from the publisher via EdelweissPlus; the opinions are my own. ( )