So Much To Be Angry About: Appalachian Movement Press 1969-1979

West Virginia University Press

First iteration: research article for Signal: A Journal of International
Political Graphics and Culture
issue #6 : March 2018, published by PM Press

 

From 2017 through early 2020, I pursued original research on Appalachian Movement Press (AMP), a leftist activist print shop that was based in Huntington, West Virginia from 1969 through 1979. AMP served as a go-to, low cost printing outfit for a broad, loose coalition of environmental and working-class political organizations in Appalachia throughout an incredible decade of activism in this region. Most notably, AMP operators also independently published around forty original pamphlets on Appalachian history and culture, including the poetry and historical writing of luminary activist/organizer Don West.

 

This work marks the first effort to document the history of AMP, and the initial result was published in the excellent, full-color publication Signal: A Journal of International Political Graphics and Culture (PM Press).

 

In the spring of 2019, I signed with West Virginia University Press to expand this research into a book, and went on to dig even deeper into the story, interviewing more than a dozen people involved either directly or peripherally with AMP.
So Much To Be Angry About: Appalachian Movement Press and Radical DIY Publishing, 1969-1979 is now available on West Virginia University press!

cover and interior design by Than Saffel

 

So Much To Be Angry About is an example of the best impulses of people’s history, careful and caring in its attention to people and places, disposing of nothing, casting a loving and critical eye and turning over stones, not just of movement history and its ideas, but also of the labor of the craftspeople, artists, and makers whose work spurs us on but sometimes goes without examination. I love how this book traces generational knowledge, complete with lessons, pitfalls, dynamism, and complication for those of us currently making and joining community, art, and resistance in Appalachia.”

—Madeline ffitch, author of Stay and Fight

 

#appalachianmovementpress

 

Copies of Signal:06 can be purchased through Justseeds, and you can read this excerpt from that original article.


I wrote the short, summary history “Troublemakers With a Printing Press” for Queer Appalachia’s publication Electric Dirt #2, forthcoming TBD – you can read that short essay here.

 

Date

2021

Category

People's History: Research & Writing