Kentucky is my fate -- Mountains : consumed by suffering -- Touching the earth -- Reclamation and reconciliation -- To be whole and holy -- Again : segregation must end -- Representations of whiteness in the black imagination -- Drive through tobacco -- Earthbound : on solid ground -- An aesthetics of blackness : strange and oppositional -- Inspired eccentricity -- A place where the soul can rest -- Aesthetic inheritances : history worked by hand -- Piecing it all together -- On being a Kentucky writer -- Returning to the wound -- Healing talk : a conversation -- Take back the night : remake the present -- Habits of the heart -- A community of care.