These days, Melinda Grisco is a teacher’s assistant at the Springer School and a professional storyteller. The feelings of being pulled back to a rural, small-town world of simplicity is frequently tempered with the realities of the ways the Appalachian region has been ravaged by corporate exploitation and neglect. She worried about the town and the potential dangers there.” These kinds of mixed feelings and even mixed blessings are not uncommon among urban Appalachians in Cincinnati. Grisco fondly remembers visiting her grandfather in West Virginia as a child: “I loved being there,” she said, “There was a farmhouse, woods, and a creek-I loved visiting the little general store and buying Nehi like it was an exotic treat.” But Grisco further explains, “my mother would never let my dad take me and my sisters back to West Virginia by himself.
In her interview on the Story Gathering Project, Melinda Grisco further explains that after World War II, her father returned to the area but “the creek was polluted, the area was poor, and my mom didn’t want her daughters growing up in such a place.” You can watch the complete interview conducted by Corrine Stanforth on the Story Gathering Project Archive. She remembers her mother telling her the decision to leave what had become a severely economically depressed area was motivated by a desire for a better life for the children. She recounts her memories of this, and those passed along by her mother and father. Grisco’s family is from Mingo County, West Virginia. In many ways, Melinda Grisco embodies the urban Appalachian experience of today, and the genesis of her book fits into this narrative. As she said, “my grandpa was still in West Virginia, and I remember noticing that everyone around me had parents who were from some part of Appalachia.” An awareness of being urban Appalachian came later in life. You were one or the other.” She also explained that she did not have a sense of being Appalachian as a child, but she also knew that most kids around her had family in places like West Virginia, Eastern Kentucky, and Tennessee. She told me that the neighborhood at the time “was largely poor white and poor black. Melinda Grisco grew up in Madisonville in the 1960s. I got the opportunity to talk to Melinda Grisco about her urban Appalachian experiences growing up in Cincinnati and about her new book, Strawberries of the Road: From the Hills of West Virginia. Her story is archived in the Story Gathering Project, and she is a professional storyteller with a new children’s book out that is set in Appalachia.
Melinda Grisco is an urban Appalachian who has quite a few stories to tell. Everyone has a story tell, the Urban Appalachian Community Coalition’s Story Gathering Project would like to hear that story and document it.
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