Going Over Home, Charles Thompson, Jr.
Going Over Home, Charles Thompson, Jr.
List: $19.95 | Sale: $13.97
Club: $9.97

Going Over Home
A Search for Rural Justice in an Unsettled Land

Author: Charles Thompson, Jr.

Narrator: Charles Thompson, Jr.

Unabridged: 7 hr 58 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 09/27/2019


Synopsis

An intimate portrait of the joys and hardships of rural life, as one man searches for community, equality, and tradition in Appalachia

Charles D. Thompson, Jr. was born in southwestern Virginia into an extended family of small farmers. Yet as he came of age he witnessed the demise of every farm in his family. Over the course of his own life of farming, rural education, organizing, and activism, the stories of his home place have been his constant inspiration, helping him identify with the losses of others and to fight against injustices. In Going Over Home, Thompson shares revelations and reflections, from cattle auctions with his grandfather to community gardens in the coal camps of eastern Kentucky, racial disparities of white and Black landownership in the South to recent work with migrant farm workers from Latin America. In this heartfelt first-person narrative, Thompson unpacks our country’s agricultural myths and addresses the history of racism and wealth inequality and how they have come to bear on our nation’s rural places and their people.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Pam on April 28, 2020

This engaging book is both a farm memoir and a discussion of racial disparities, wealth inequalities, and their effects on rural folk, mostly from 1959 to 1997, with a 2015 update. In his lifetime, Charlie witnessed the demise of every farm in his family. Working by turns as a farmer, a student, an......more

Goodreads review by Jessica on November 07, 2020

There used to be hundreds or thousands of small, family farms dotting rural areas all around the United States. But, over time these family farms are lost either to development or larger, industrial farms. In Going Over Home Charles Thompson discusses both his personal connection to family farms and......more

Goodreads review by John on August 03, 2024

A memoir with an important message, Going Over Home traces Charles Thompson's journey from aspiring farmer to small-farmer activist and finally to an academic/author trying to change this world. While maybe not as lyrical as Wendell Berry, Thompson's journey provides first-hand insights about the ba......more

Goodreads review by Rob on November 04, 2021

Going Over Home is an eloquent paean to the expression, "Don't Mourn, Organize." A strongly written, humble telling of the experiences, and ruminations on them, of a Southwest Virginia native who grew up in a family that had farmed for generations, but now had to give it up, given the economic challe......more

Goodreads review by Alix on August 13, 2024

This book contains some important and well thought out points concerning small farmers and rural communities and the injustices that farmers (especially but definitely not limited to farmers of color) have faced over the decades and face even now. I admire the authors work in trying to help bring ab......more