September 1, 2023
Young looks back to her childhood in Scranton, Pennsylvania, which had been the nation's coal capital, but by the 1960s its golden age of industry was over. Young contrasts her experiences in the Lackawanna Valley, a once prosperous mining community turned grim and polluted by coal mining and coal waste, with the 1856 landscape painting, The Lackawanna Valley, by George Inness, a pastoral view of the verdant valley even as plumes rise from a passing train and industrial sites on the horizon. Young writes about the valley with both deep affection and sharp clarity. She recalls loving the vegetable gardens her grandfather kept and observing how hard the women in the family worked canning the harvest to save money on food. Young also writes about how living in the coal-dimmed valley distorted her sense of color; she didn't know that her beloved stuffed bunny was white and not gray until she washed the dust away. Young's memoir of her hometown is as powerful a picture as Inness' painting, revealing its harsh transformation a century later.
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