About this Event
Beth Howard, activisit and organizer, will join us at Box Turtle Books to discuss her new book, Song for a Hard Hit People: A Memoir of Antiracist Solidarity from a Coal Miner’s Daughter. She is the Cultural Strategist for Showing Up for Racial Justice (SURJ), the largest national organization bringing white people into the fight for racial and economic justice. She grew up in a rural white working-class community in Eastern Kentucky and has organized in the American South for two decades, primarily in her beloved home state of Kentucky.
About Song for a Hard Hit People
An Appalachian organizer’s excavation of the past, her own and her people’s, to spark a collective fight for a future where we all have what we need and deserve
In Song for a Hard-Hit People, Beth Howard shares her story of growing up in Appalachian Kentucky—the economic struggles, trauma, and ever-present sexism along with the loving care of her close-knit rural community. These complex people shaped Howard’s sense of justice and solidarity, and taught her about the inextricable bonds working-class people share, despite our differences. But her childhood also left her with emotional wounds that threatened to destroy the life she built for herself. While healing her wounds is deeply personal, there’s no separating it from the people and place that made her.
Appalachia is often framed as a place to escape from, where people are hateful, lazy, and bring tragedy upon themselves. But in her quest to understand her home and her people, Howard uncovers the powerful history of white Appalachians fighting alongside Black and Brown people, pushing back against billionaires who gain power by using racism to divide them. Appalachia, she realizes, has not only been hit hard; it is the place to wage a freedom struggle.
Too many of us are denied the basic necessities of life: somewhere decent to live, good food to eat, health care that doesn’t break the bank, jobs that don’t K*ll us. As Howard reminds us, we haven’t got a chance—unless we organize.
In the midst of divisive rhetoric, violent repression, and grifters writing elegies, may this story be a song.
Praise for Song for a Hard Hit People
A Publisher's Marketplace 2026 Buzz Books Selection
“At a time when analysis is everywhere, and actual strategy is critically needed but hard to come by, Beth Howard's book gives us a road map to building the cross race, class solidarity we need to battle the rising authoritarianism of our times. In the best tradition of working class story telling, and with beauty, pain and inspiration, she takes us on her journey as a coal miners daughter, and her emergence as an effective, passionate organizer among her Appalachian Kentucky people. This book will make you cry, laugh, think, and feel. But most of all, it will leave you hopeful.” —Angela Y. Davis
"Political organizer Howard connects her Appalachian upbringing to her career in social justice, in this deeply felt debut....While Howard’s empathetic account stands in welcome contrast to caricatures of Appalachian life, of particular note is her unwillingness to let the gender and racial disparities endemic to the region slide. The result is a refreshing, clear-eyed chronicle of a political awakening." —Publisher's Weekly
"Song for a Hard Hit People is as heart-rending as it is inspiring. Writing from a place of love, grace, and conviction, Beth Howard recognizes the struggles and dignity of white working people without losing sight of the racism and patriarchy that remain the chief obstacles to freeing us from the rapaciousness of capitalism. And yet, the book’s most profound lesson is this: organizing for a better world saves lives—even the life of the organizer." —Robin D. G. Kelley, author of Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination, Race Rebels, Hammer and Hoe
"A colorful and highly personal account of how the trials of a hardscrabble life shaped one woman’s devotion to activism." —Kirkus
"Beth Howard is a genius writer with a voice that is as down to earth as it is insightful. Song for a Hard-Hit People is about class, racial justice, addiction, and the rural-urban divide. A memoir told with complexity and nuance, it is a balm. Like Howard and her band of top-shelf organizers who knock on doors and listen without judgment, this book is full of hard-won, useful lessons about how to collectively move forward in these brittle times." —Beth Macy, author of Paper Girl and Dopesick
More on Beth
Beth has been a lead organizer on campaigns to raise the minimum wage and restore voting rights. She's also engaged white working-class Southerners on successful electoral campaigns, including ones that defeated an abortion ban ballot initiative in the 2022 Kentucky midterms and reelected Democratic Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear in 2023—and ran a rural field office in the 2020 Georgia runoff election.
Beth is the creator of the viral narrative campaign Rednecks for Black Lives, and has been featured on the NBC News National Day of Racial Healing special, Matter of Fact’s Listening Tour with Soledad O’Brian, NPR’s Here and Now, Now This News, in the book Power Concedes Nothing: How Grassroots Organizing Wins Elections, the New York Times, and The Boston Globe. Beth lives in Lexington, Kentucky. Song for a Hard-Hit People is her first book. You can find her on Substack at Working Class Love Notes and online at bethhowardky.com.
Event Venue & Nearby Stays
Box Turtle Books, 104 East Warren Street, Shelby, United States
USD 0.00 to USD 32.00
