This book was more of an inspirational memoir than an entertaining memoir. I think it is a good book for someone to read that is trying to overcome educational boundaries. It is very inspiring to read a story about someone from a family of poverty, or near too, forge ahead in their live to reach such high goals that others in their family never have. This book shows that if you want to achieve something badly enough and are committed to succeeding nothing is impossible. The author food a good job of educating the reader to a culture that she has grown up in and provided facts and suggestions without being dry. I would definitely recommend this book to someone in need of inspiration to continue our further their education.

Hill Women by Cassie Chambers goes beyond the roots of her individual family to explore the culture of the Appalachian Hills. Celebrating the heart and tenacity of the women who hold their families together while struggling to find a place for themselves in a changing world, Chambers reveals the challenges facing this unique community. With a legacy of generational poverty, limited job prospects, and isolation, the hill women combat a myriad of social issues, including but not limited to, domestic violence, addiction, limited resources, and social stigma. With a singular determination, they strive to claim their right to a more secure future for generations to come. Whether you agree with the politics touched upon by Chambers, you will find Hill Women thought-provoking and inspirational in equal measures.

According to Cassie Chambers, she wrote Hill Women to honor the strong women of Appalachia. It served to teach me about the region in general. Some of the political issues she discusses are specific and current, so the book will be dated very soon. I think she did a good job of portraying her family and community in a kind manner.

This is a memoir of growing up in Owsley County, KY and fighting against the poverty that is a way of life. The author focuses on the grit and determination the women of her family as well as others in the county as they support themselves and their families. Cassie becomes and attorney after attending Yale & Harvard. In the process she realizes her home is in the mountains fighting for those who can not.

The more I read this book, the more I was reminded of JD Vance’s Hillbilly Elegy. This is pretty much the female version of his story. Like Vance, Cassie Chambers made it out of her rural hometown and ended up at Yale, earning a law degree.

It’s admirable that Cassie wanted to better herself enough to do the work required to enjoy a better life. It’s also admirable that she has gone back to her home state to help make life better for others. But when it came to some of her own family members, she accepted their lack of ambition, made excuses for them and failed to encourage them to get an education.

I did expect more from this book. Once I got about halfway through, I felt like I had learned all she had to tell and I was right. I wish I had not wasted my time finishing the second half. It’s not a bad book, but I just felt like she had nothing new to say.

Thank you, NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group-Ballantine for allowing me to read an advance copy and give my honest review.

'Generosity was both an insurance police and a deeply held value.'

Kentucky born Cassie Chambers grew up in Owsley County, all too aware of the hard-work and struggle her grandparents and their children dealt with. Cassie parents were both still working their way through college, living in Berea but close enough to her Mother Wilma’s family when they had her. With the impossible cost of childcare, they relied on those in Owsley to care for her, and it is here that Cassie ran around ‘getting into trouble’ and playing with her many cousins. It was a second home where she was privy to stories about all her aunts and uncles. It is also where she wondered why it was so important for her granny to see her mother Wilma get a college education, when for many it was never an option.

Working on a tobacco farm (Wilma’s family didn’t own it) was backbreaking labor, more incredible was her Aunt Ruth who was the best tobacco worker in the county, better than even some of the strongest men. Rising early in the mornings to help when she stayed with her kin, she saw firsthand that it was never an easy life. Her granny was just as hardworking, even at her advanced age and despite the poverty and years of struggle, she always had her pride and an easy smile for others. It was through spending time with her clan that Cassie’s curious nature was fed, where she learned hands on science, engineering and art. With her parents as an example, education was a goal knew she must strive for. So how did this young girl whose family tree is deeply rooted in Appalachia find the wherewithal to attend Yale and Harvard, becoming a lawyer?

Obstacles in the mountains of Kentucky can feel insurmountable when each day is a struggle just to feed one’s family. When there isn’t work to be had, when you live below government-designated poverty, when the counties haven’t developed like the rest of the country and the rest of the world has forgotten you. Where all politician’s promises fall by the wayside once they are in office, if they even notice you at all. Here, one must wrestle with leaving the support and strong bonds of family to find work, and anyone who has ever attempted such a thing without money (even with a college degree) understands it can be quite a feat. Staying can feel easier, but it is not without hardship. An education, as seen through Cassie’s rise and the opposite end, as we see with her cousin Melissa’s choices, is jarring. As Cassie reiterates, they are the same in so many ways, born from the same stock, branches on the same tree yet Melissa had drug addicted parents. Drug addiction haunts the hills, there isn’t much hope in a place that offers nothing for it’s young by way of entertainment, where health care is shaky at best, where the coal mines were never as big as in other counties and tobacco farming collapsed. This is a land where fields are left empty and yet they are a proud, strong people. Where women throughout generations help in birthing children, because there isn’t anywhere else to go and if there is how can they afford the proper, necessary care?

Outsiders see only poverty and like Cassie says, feel pity and disgust, never getting past the surface to understand why natives feel such a connection to the land, generations in their family. Through the fear she and other women in her circle feel navigating the world outside rural Appalachia, it is evident how much courage it takes to strive for more. To judge the people as ignorant is a travesty, for they have learned how to exist in the past through feeding themselves and each other growing their own food (I have a garden, it’s not easy at all and has more failure than success), have worked with the harsh elements to survive, helping birth children, and her own granny could take apart anything and put it back together for the better. Stupid? Not one bit. Lazy, pitiable? No way! By returning to lift those in need, with her education in hand, it is inspiring. Women, in this memoir, lifted each other even while they themselves had nothing. Ruth, the older sister, was selfless providing in every way she could for Cassie’s mother Wilma so that she could find a better life. This support, in turn, made Cassie’s future possible too. It warms the heart see such generosity come from people who have so little. That the rest of the world looks down upon people, like Cassie’s Papaw whose work was backbreaking and long, far harder than anything most of them have ever done, is shameful. These are folks, especially the women, who somehow manage to feed their children while working their weary hands to the bone and still feel a sense of duty to their community while keeping faith in their god by living what they preach.

This is a tribute to the women whose grit was passed down to Cassie. Rather than bemoaning their circumstances, they get things done and often in creative ways. Like Cassie said, there is no such thing as “I can’t do it.” It wasn’t easy for Cassie to work hard, to step outside the comfort of her family and assimilate into an elite place (Ivy League schools) but with the strength of her family’s blood running through her veins, she wasn’t going to give in to self-defeat, it isn’t their way.

Hill Women is a heart-felt, engaging telling of one girls rise from poverty that was only possible through the love and support of the strong, wise women before her.

Publication Date: January 7, 2020

Ballantine Books

Despite the promises of the title, this book isn’t so much about hill women as it is about one woman, the author. To put it gently, she is not overly interesting. When she did veer into other people’s stories it was still people intimately connected to her: mother, grandmother, cousin, aunt. We need to get past this idea that everyone needs to write a memoir about their immediate relatives. I did learn about the fee-based justice system in rural Eastern Kentucky, but beyond that, this book is very average and there’s not much to recommend. If I were not reading it for review, I would have not bothered to finish it.

Amazing, powerful, thought provoking yet heartwarming. Cassie pays tribute to the hill women who raised her. Cassie came through the poverty of the Appalachian mountains, one of the poorest areas in the United States, to earn degrees from both Yale and Harvard. Cassie does not forget her roots. With her Harvard law degree, she returns to provide legal help to mostly women.
I voluntarily read and reviewed an advanced copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

This was a fascinating memoir! I was completely caught up in her story and her stories of the women in this part of the country. Hill Women is thought provoking, moving, and powerful. A tale of survival, strength, and community. I loved it! Thank you to the publisher for the review copy in exchange for my honest review

From the first page, I was gripped by this memoir of growing up in a poverty-stricken area of the Appalachias. The author's genuine love and respect for the people she grew up among kept this from feeling like one of those anthropological examinations where the reader is expected to wring their hands over the way a foreign-to-us group of people live. The book instead raised my awareness of the issues facing these communities, but in a non-sensational way. I had many of my assumptions challenged and came away from this book better informed and also entertained.

While I enjoyed this book, it didn't pack quite the same emotional punch as similar memoirs like Educated or Glass Castle. I was (admittedly naively) surprised by how recent these events took place. When you live in a suburban bubble sometimes you forget that places like the hollers of Appalachia still exist. The women of this area are strong, hard working people filled with determination, and creativity as evidenced by the author's granny, mother and aunt. The author herself had to find her way through culture shock as she navigated Ivy league institutions but ultimately found her way back to the holler to provide aide to those she felt the deepest connection to.

Hill Women was an immediate NetGalley request because it encompassed a lot about Kentucky literacy, poverty, and growth, which have all been a topic of focus for me over the past year and change. When the request was accepted, I worked it into my review rotation, and funny enough, it came shortly after I finished The Giver of Stars. As I started reading Hill Women, I recognized a lot of information that I had researched post The Giver of Stars about the outstandingly poor literacy rates in Kentucky. Almost 15% of the state's population cannot read above a 5th grade reading level, and Kentucky ranks 45th out of 50 states when it comes to education and literacy rates.

Now that you have a picture of what Kentucky literacy looks like, you can start to realize the importance of Chambers' memoir, in which she recounts the impact of education on her family and the town she grew up in. Going into great detail of her past, Chambers discusses her family's deep roots in Cow Creek, located in Owsley County (about 55 miles southeast from Berea, KY) and how poverty has stunted the educational growth of it's citizens. Her papaw was a tobacco sharecropper, and her granny pinched every penny to keep her family afloat. Chamber's granny encouraged her mother to go to school and eventually attend Berea College, in the hopes that it would give her a chance at a better life where they wouldn't have to stretch every dollar to afford life's necessities.

As Chambers continues, she shows how her grandmother, aunt, and mother shaped her own future, and how their mountain women strength kept her grounded in her roots as she searched for her own purpose. She delves into the pressure of what it feels like to fit into a place you're not certain you belong, of going outside of your comfort zones, and how in the end, you have to be true to yourself instead of trying to be like everyone else. For Chambers, this lead to returning to Kentucky and becoming a defense lawyer for men and women in need.

Overall, I really enjoyed Chamber's insight into the rural and rugged population of Kentucky. Her writing is factual and blunt, but embedded with strength, emotion, and honesty. It's easy to see why her clients would want her defending them- she wants to see justice and genuine progress in a system that has oppressed many impoverished Kentucky residents for years. Her call for change is loud and clear, just as her pride in the hill women that have inspired her.

*This review will be posted on 12/20/2019 on www.thelexingtonbookie.com.*

A moving and fascinating memoir about strong women, survival, grit, and the family ties that transcend poverty. One of the things that I found most interesting is how we can still love a home and childhood that were difficult and impoverished- sometimes those difficulties bring family members closer together. The women in this story had hard lives. They worked hard. They sacrificed. They had to see their children go without and they didn't always have shoes on their feet, but they loved the land they came from, the traditions, the natural beauty, & the families they nurtured. Well-written, accessible, and a lovingly told story.

I received an advanced copy of this book from the publisher, through NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.

I was eager to read this book after reading its description. I have learned a little bit about the Appalachian areas of Kentucky and West Virginia over the past two years as my own parents have been doing mission work there. The book helped open my eyes to the struggles faced by people in that area and the old ways of thinking that may never change. I saw a little glimpse of how my hometown could easily be mistaken for Booneville.

The author told a lot about her own schooling from a boarding school in New Mexico to the Ivy Leagues of Yale, Harvard and London. The author decided to bring politics into the story - this part I could definitely have done without.

I really enjoyed this book...it is about hill women from the hollers of Kentucky, but my mom comes from the hollers of West Virginia.
The author, Cassie Chambers, was able to rise out of poverty to become a lawyer with two Ivy League Degrees, and became an advocate for the poor in Kentucky.
Cassie came from a long line of hard working folks who were very poor and none had gone far at all in school, they had to work the fields of the tobacco farm they lived on. Her mother was the only child of her grandparents to graduate high school and attend college, making life better for herself.
Casie addresses the problems of living in these areas.. why people find it so hard to rise up out of poverty.
I was reminded so much of my mom’s years in the hills and her relatives there when reading the parts of her book when she talks about her Granny and Papaw and Aunt Ruth, and what living in the holler was like. I just loved those parts of the book!

Thank you to Netgalley and Random House-Ballantine

I’ve been interested in Appalachia since discovering the Foxfire books during my hippy era. Their terrain and strong relationships are worlds away from mine, growing up in Southern California. I’ve read Homer Hickham’s series, several of Rick Bragg’s books and J.D. Vance’s recent book, Hillbilly Elegy, which left me with a feeling of loss and hopelessness. Along comes Hill Women with Cassie’s passion for her hills and people and determination to improve their lives with better education and health. It is a much different book than the others I’ve read and reminds a little of the blind men discovering the elephant. She sees hope for her hill people and has gone back to her roots to help bring about that change.

I had to remind myself that this was not a depression era story. The author is the age of my children yet the lack of resources and education made it feel like something from previous decades. Cassie’s grandmother and her mother Wilma recognized the imperative of education, so Wilma was the first to graduate from high school and then the first to graduate from college and from there, doors opened up. In turn they supported Cassie’s educational journey which ended with a degree from Harvard school of law.

On top of education needing improvement, health and nutrition are high on the the author’s “needs improvement” list, as is access to affordable health care. It’s easy to point fingers at the high-fat diet as the root of poor health, but it’s not easy when fresh produce is in short supply. And then there are the toxins from mining and agriculture in the soil and ground water that might explain some of the odd autoimmune disorders. And worse still, there’s the meth and opioid crisis. Those are just some of the obstacles that are in the face of change, but instead of crying “poor me,” the author writes a book of hope. I always love reading “triumph of the human spirit” stories and this is one them.

Seeing hill people through a woman’s eyes is a different part of the elephant for me. She says, “Over the years, I’ve seen many strong mountain people take the hillbilly label and wear it proudly. As one of my friends told me, ‘I don’t mind being called a hillbilly. Hillbilly is a culture, the culture of the mountain people. But Lord, don’t call me a redneck. You can be a redneck anywhere. You can only be a hillbilly in these mountains.”

I choice this book because I wanted to learn more about the people of the Appalachian mountain people. I enjoyed the first part of the book as I read about those who overcame what life had been for them. They made a way for themselves and I think that is such a strong mindset and determination that we need to see more of today.
Once the book became political I didn’t enjoy it anymore. I feel there is enough politics around us that when I read a book I am not wanting to hear more about politics
Thanks to the publisher and netgalley for an advanced copy.
This is my own opinion.

While a heartwarming story and an easy read, this didn't quite pack the punch of Westover's Educated or Smarsh's Heartland, two 'social commentary memoirs" that repeatedly came to mind, and that follow the same lines, of women who find their way to higher education from families or communities that have been otherwise isolated or forgotten. Having been to parts of Appalachia I felt fortunate to already have mental images of my own to rely on because I don't know if this painted enough of a picture otherwise, in that realm, and I wanted the characters to have more depth. I will also say that I found myself skimming the last 10% of the book. I appreciate the insight into the politics and surprisingly sophisticated political/economical knowledge of this remote mountain region, but partisanship isn't really my thing.

Cassie Chambers has written of her home and family, giving us a real to life picture of just how hard life can be when poverty is the only way of life available. Her descriptive writing gives us a visual of a life most of us did not know existed. A wonderfully told story of several generations of women and their struggles to make life better for their children and their community. Better than any PBS special you could see, read this then share, the more the story is told, the better life can be for these Hill Women.

If you enjoyed reading Hillbilly Elegy, you will enjoy this title. I did not laugh out loud in spots, but was more inspired by the grit and determination of the author, Cassie, and her mother, Wilma. As tough as men may have it in Appalachia, getting an education, and reaching for a career is a path littered with pitfalls to keep women from success. I felt that this both both a story about the author, yet also how her mother's choices and determination inspired her. I was really glad that Cassie moved back to Kentucky, and tried to help other women trapped in abusive relationships. It was eye opening to see the many barriers these women have to obtaining legal assistance. For instance - I had no idea that the woman filing for a divorce from an abusive spouse would have to pay for said spouse's legal representation!!!