A Space on the Side of the Road vividly evokes an "other" America that
survives precariously among the ruins of the West Virginia coal camps
and "hollers." To Kathleen Stewart, this particular "other" exists as an
excluded subtext to the American narrative of capitalism, modernization,
materialism, and democracy. In towns like Amigo, Red Jacket, Helen, Odd,
Viper, Decoy, and Twilight, men and women "just settin'" track a dense
social imaginary through stories of traumas, apparitions, encounters,
and eccentricities. Stewart explores how this rhythmic, dramatic, and
complicated storytelling imbues everyday life in the hills and forms a
cultural poetics. Alternating her own ruminations on language, culture,
and politics with continuous accounts of "just talk, " Stewart propels
us into the intensity of this nervous, surreal "space on the side of the
road." It is a space that gives us a glimpse into a breach in American
society itself, where graveyards of junked cars and piles of other
trashed objects endure along with the memories that haunt those who have
been left behind by "progress."Like James Agee's portrayal of the
poverty-stricken tenant farmers of the Depression South in Let Us Now
Praise Famous Men, this book uses both language and photographs to help
readers encounter a fragmented and betrayed community, one "occupied" by
schoolteachers, doctors, social workers, and other professionals
representing an "official" America. Holding at bay any attempts at
definitive, social scientific analysis, Stewart has concocted a new sort
of ethnographic writing that conveys the immediacy, density, texture,
and materiality of the coal camps. A Space on the Side of the Road
finally bridges the gapbetween anthropology and cultural studies and
provides us with a brilliant and challenging experiment in thinking and
writing about "America."
