Reflections On "The Hawk's Done Gone and Other Stories" by Mildred Haun

A recent Facebook message exchange with another lover of the short story cycle genre has reminded me that I have never written specifically on this blog about "The Hawk's Done Gone and other Stories" by Mildred Haun.  I have thought about it numerous times and have even reread the book at least once since I began this blog.  I was first exposed to this book about 1974 in Beckley, WV, by the great Appalachian poet and educator, Robert "Bob" "Billy Greenhorn" Snyder.  Bob loved this book and rightly so.  It is one of the most truly Appalachian books in all of Appalachian Literature.  It is also one of the finest works in Appalachian Literature which utilizes dialect writing.  I have said before in this blog that I do not generally attempt to write in dialect because it is very difficult to do appropriately and can be quite laughable and, yet, demeaning when it is done poorly whether the dialect being written about is Appalachian, African American, southern, or nearly any other dialect which is depicted as the dominant manner of speech for any minority group.  

This book falls squarely into the genre of literature known widely as the short story cycle.  I, like many other students of American Literature, was not even aware of the term until fairly recently.  Yet, I had also known literally since the days I was first exposed to the book that it has often been the subject of an ongoing argument as to whether it is a group of short stories or a novel.  Other well known books which also fall within that genre include "The Nick Adams Stories" and "In Our Time" by Ernest Hemingway, "Winsesburg, Ohio" by Sherwood Anderson,  "Go Down, Moses" by William Faulkner, and "The Joy Luck Club" by Amy Tan.  "The Hawk's Done Gone" was written primarily in an undergraduate short story writing class at Vanderbilt University when the author was completing her bachelors degree and needed one more course to fulfill the requirements.  It was originally published in 1940 and a later edition with a few extra stories was released in 1968 two years after the author's death.  It has been the subject of much readership and discussion primarily by students of Appalachian Literature.  But it has also often been a point of argument in the discussion of the short story cycle.

The book is comprised of twenty-two interconnected short stories and a Prologue.  As is generally universal in the short story cycle, most, if not all, of the stories are capable of standing alone as highly readable, well crafted short stories.  But the stories are all set in a small community in East Tennessee which is based on Haun's own homeland in the Hoot Owl District of Cocke County where she spent most of her life.  Most of the stories are about various members of the White and Kanipe extended family and its matriarch Mary Dorthula White who also serves at the narrator of most of the stories.  Mary Dorthula White is a granny woman or midwife who delivers most of the local babies, prepares the dead for burial, and is sometimes suspected of being a witch.  I have written about the book in a comparison with "The Patron Saint of Ugly" by Marie Manilla in an article which has been published online in the "Mildred Haun Review Journal" at Walters State Community College in the area in which Mildred Haun spent her life.   In that article, I discussed how the book exemplifies several of the Appalachian cultural values which Loyal Jones wrote about in his seminal book, "Appalachian Vaules".  "The Hawk's Done Gone" is an excellent illustration of several of those cultural values including Love of Place; Independence, Self Reliance, and Pride; and Religion.

My favorite of the stories in the book is "Barshia's Horse He Made, It Flew" which I believe is Haun's masterpiece.  The story is narrated by Mary Dorthula White and the character for which it is entitled is her step-son Barshia Kanipe who can be described as being somewhere between odd and mentally ill.  Barshia uses the hide of a dead mule and other items to construct a winged horse which he hauls to the top of the family barn in an attempt to fly.  It is one fine piece of fiction and I won't spoil the story or the book by disclosing the entire plot and ending.

Many of the stories are at least partially involved with death and Mary Dorthula White actually maintains a family record in the family Bible which is the one personal antique she is able to prevent being sold by her shiftless husband, Ad Kanipe, and his sons from a previous marriage.  This book is one of my favorites in all of Appalachian Literature and I believe if you read it you will agree.