Books like The Bloomsbury Handbook of Rural Education in the United States — picked by fans

What I love about this book is how it shows that rural schools offer communities more than just a classroom education.

In this case—for better and for worse—it’s sports. And Bissinger wades into it all: tensions between education and sports, the economic unraveling of Texas oil country, the costs of racism, and the pure adrenaline of a Friday night football game.

Not every rural community is as sports-addicted as Odessa, but all have their imperfections and fault lines—so much about this book resonates.

This is a classic in rural education.

A highly respected rural education researcher, Corbett documents the educational practices that, while well-intentioned, may contribute to rural depopulation: if rural schools do their jobs well, they are often preparing rural youth for an adult life lived elsewhere.

Still, though, for many rural youth, college remains elusive. As Corbett writes, with typical eloquence, “Higher education remains ‘invisible’ training for invisible jobs in an elsewhere economy…”

With complexity and nuance, this book captures the many dilemmas facing rural youth, families, and teachers, as well as the high costs of higher education for rural communities. My copy is a rainbow of sticky notes and highlights: I consulted it often when writing my book.

The common narrative is that rural Black schools in the segregated South were inadequate and poorly staffed; desegregation, the thinking goes, was an unmitigated good.

This book, by the esteemed historian Vanessa Siddle Walker, was one of the first I read to challenge this narrative, showing how, despite underfunding, these schools were often staffed by talented Black educators who held high standards and created nurturing, empowering classrooms.

In my research in the rural Delta, I have found that many adults today remember these schools fondly. For them, desegregation, which closed many of these schools, carried significant loss, and those losses continue to shape Black communities and schools in the rural South today.

I began my career in education as a student teacher in rural Vermont. Like many beginners, I started off as a terrible teacher, and I was desperate for resources. Yet I found very little about rural teaching specifically—until I happened upon this book.

It was like Keizer was speaking directly to me. As a teacher in rural Vermont, he writes with humor and grace about the challenges and possibilities of rural teaching.

He is definitely an outsider to the Northeast Kingdom, and, occasionally, his descriptions have an air of condescension—and, today, they certainly read as dated. But this book has a special place in my heart—it got me through my first few years of rural teaching.

One boy alone in the wilderness—without any outside contact—is a crash course in “survival skills,” but this education also comes with a shift in philosophy that harkens back to paleo times when humans lived directly with the land.

When I read this book, I was coming of age in my relationship with the forest and was determined to learn about my ties to atavism and my potential as a defector from modern civilization. Though this book’s realities are stretched by the imagination, the soul of that human/wilderness relationship shines through.

There’s a spookiness to this historical story that pulled me in straight away. But the adventure of children soon exposes a deeper chasm of heartbreak, and the vulnerability in young lives. Here in the mountain village superstition houses fear, crippling a community at large. That parents are the guidepost for how a child perceives themselves, and how they function and see the world as adults is something to think on. The Last Sin Eater teaches us all another way to live that is filled with goodness and grace.

This depiction of a life of poverty in southern Appalachia around 1900 would be too sad to warrant its reading, were it not for its strong and sensitive narrator, Julie Harmon. The author describes the mundane details of butchering a hog or washing of a dead man’s feet within the context of the marriage of Hank and Julie, poor, uneducated, and perhaps mismatched young people who face one adversity after another. The details of ordinary life blossom into unexpected meaning in the interpretation of a sensitive narrator who not only cherishes details, but who is also exquisitely aware of her own feelings. She speaks in the straightforward language of an uneducated person rather than in the flowery prose of a voice attuned to expressing itself. Yet her presentation takes on the poetry of a clever woman gifted with a unique interiority.

Through Julie, the author renders nuanced feelings in a… show more.

Divine, divine, divine! This novel taught me so much about the landscape in Appalachia. The female characters were rich and deep. Running throughout the story was the thread of women standing for farming systems that partner with nature versus male characters who want to dominate or decimate.

It was musical and mystical, and I just adored being transported to the cabin in the woods and the rich gardens of the women who knew how Mama Earth rolls. There was also a wonderful exploration of female desire. It was lush and leafy, and I’m so grateful to Barbara for writing this book

Miyamoto is a famous ethnologist who walked the length of Japan, padding through its far-flung hamlets, to compile books about provincial livelihoods in the 1930s. The result is a look into the hard lives of rice farmers and their wives.

Miyamoto’s interviews revealed many of the cultural quirks, such as the promiscuous ways of certain country women and their equally unrestrained suitors—often traders passing through town. The characters Miyamoto interviews offer fascinating, frank, and impactful voices, especially from women who would not have otherwise been heard.

Saigyo (1118-1190) was one of the most influential Japanese poets. His name means "Westward Journey" which implies moving toward the Pure Land of Amitabha Buddha. The poems bring out the bitter-sweet quality of life, beauty and loneliness, blooming spring and frosty winter, cherry petals and tears that fall, echoing the deep emotionality and mystery of the spirit of Japanese Buddhism.