Participation Type
Paper
Session Title
Session 5.09 Literature and Poetry
Presentation #1 Title
Keeper of the Legends: Gretchen Moran Laskas’ The Midwife’s Tale and Writing A Woman’s Life
Presentation #1 Abstract or Summary
It is clear from the opening lines of Gretchen Moran Laskas’ The Midwife’s Tale that this story is inspired by oral storytelling. David Abrams writes: “The Midwife’s Tale feels like something which has been passed down for generations in Laskas’ own family” (2). Elizabeth Whitely, the narrator, begins by asserting: Mama always said that most of being a good midwife was in knowing the family history. . . . This is our own story—a history intertwined with more than a thousand babies we’ve brought into these hills of West Virginia. (1) Later, Elizabeth references her mama again when she clarifies a point about storytelling: “Sometimes the truth isn’t found in the story itself, but in the telling—telling what you know, not just what is real” (4). Elizabeth understands the wagging tongues have tried to conjure her narrative from superficial details that say she was “base-born” and thus set apart from others. “They would tell my story,” she thinks about the gossiping tongues that tried to frame and define her life, but none understood . . . her story as did she herself” (97). Elizabeth Whitely, the midwife, knows that our stories are the singular most important part of us, and the maddening challenge is to live them and tell them as they are, not as others perceive them. Writing one’s life, keeping the family legends, telling stories with all their uniqueness and individuality has been the singular aim of Laskas’ fiction and her life as a writer.
At-A-Glance Bio- Presenter #1
Dr. Sylvia Bailey Shurbutt is Coordinator of the Appalachian Studies Programs at Shepherd University and Director of the Appalachian Heritage Writers Project, the WV Fiction Competition, the Appalachian Heritage Writer-in-Residence Program, and West Virginia's first ever NEH Summer Seminar for Teachers in 2013. She has published on a variety of Appalachian writers in journals across the country and in the Scribners American Writers series. For full vitae details see http://www.shepherd.edu/englweb/faculty/shurbutt.html.
Keeper of the Legends: Gretchen Moran Laskas’ The Midwife’s Tale and Writing A Woman’s Life
Harris Hall 446
It is clear from the opening lines of Gretchen Moran Laskas’ The Midwife’s Tale that this story is inspired by oral storytelling. David Abrams writes: “The Midwife’s Tale feels like something which has been passed down for generations in Laskas’ own family” (2). Elizabeth Whitely, the narrator, begins by asserting: Mama always said that most of being a good midwife was in knowing the family history. . . . This is our own story—a history intertwined with more than a thousand babies we’ve brought into these hills of West Virginia. (1) Later, Elizabeth references her mama again when she clarifies a point about storytelling: “Sometimes the truth isn’t found in the story itself, but in the telling—telling what you know, not just what is real” (4). Elizabeth understands the wagging tongues have tried to conjure her narrative from superficial details that say she was “base-born” and thus set apart from others. “They would tell my story,” she thinks about the gossiping tongues that tried to frame and define her life, but none understood . . . her story as did she herself” (97). Elizabeth Whitely, the midwife, knows that our stories are the singular most important part of us, and the maddening challenge is to live them and tell them as they are, not as others perceive them. Writing one’s life, keeping the family legends, telling stories with all their uniqueness and individuality has been the singular aim of Laskas’ fiction and her life as a writer.
