Going Over Home

A Search for Rural Justice in an Unsettled Land

By: Charles Thompson Jr.

Narrated by: Charles D. Thompson Jr.

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.

©2019 Charles D. Thompson, Jr. (P)2019 Chelsea Green Publishing

the power of a seed in an unsettled land

the real story about how food arrives on our table, a book or story each and every American should read