By Terri Schlichenmeyer, Special to The Tri-State Defender
“Affrilachia: Testimonies” by Chris Aluka Berry with Kelly Elaine Navies and Maia A. Surdam
c.2024, University of Kentucky Press $50.00 252 pages
An average oak tree is bigger around than two people, together, can reach.
That mighty tree starts out with an acorn the size of a nickel, ultimately growing to some eighty feet tall with a canopy of a hundred feet across or more. And like the new book, “Affrilachia” by Chris Aluka Berry (with Kelly Elaine Navies and Maia A. Surdam), its roots spread wide.
In 2016, “on a foggy Sunday morning in March,” Chris Aluka Berry visited the Mount Zion AME Zion Church in Cullowhee, North Carolina, for the first time. The congregation was tiny. Just a handful of people were there that day, but a pair of siblings stood out to him.
Ann Rogers and Mae Louise Allen lived on opposite sides of town, says Berry, and neither had a driver’s license. He surmised that church was the only time the elderly sisters could get together, but their devotion to one another was clear.
As the service ended, he asked Allen if he could visit her again. Was she willing to talk about her life in the Appalachian Mountains, her parents, her town?
She was, and arrangements were made. But before Berry could get back to Cullowhee, he learned that Allen had died. Saddened, he wondered how many stories are lost each day in mountain communities where African Americans have lived for more than a century.
“I couldn’t make photographs of the past,” he says, “but I could document the people and places living now.”
In doing so, he also offers photos that he collected from people he met in “Affrilachia,” in North Carolina, Georgia, Kentucky and Tennessee: At a rustic “camp” that was likely created by enslaved people, at churches and in modest houses along highways.
The people he interviewed recalled family tales and community stories of support, hardship and home.
Coauthor Kelly Elaine Navies says, “These images shout without making a sound.”
If it’s true what they say about a picture being worth a thousand words, then “Affrilachia,” which is packed with photos, is worth a million.
With that in mind, there is not a lot of narrative inside this book, just a few poems, a small number of brief interviews, a handful of memories passed down and some back-stories from Berry and his coauthors. The tales are interesting, but scant.
For most readers, though, the lack of narrative isn’t going to matter much. The photographs are the reason why you would have this book.
It includes pictures of life as it was 50 years ago or a century ago, group photos and pictures taken of proud moments, worn pews and happy children. Some of the modern photos may make you wonder why they’re included, but they set a tone and tell a tale.
This is the kind of book you will take off the shelf, and notice something different every time you do. “Affrilachia” does not contain a lot of words, but it is a good choice when it’s time to branch out in your reading.
