Going Over Home: A Search for Rural Justice in an Unsettled Land

"Going Over Home is a call that inspires the reader to stand shoulder to shoulder with family farmers in their daily struggle."—Willie Nelson

An intimate portrait of the joys and hardships of rural life, as one man searches for community, equality, and tradition in Appalachia

Charles D. Thompson, Jr. was born in southwestern Virginia into an extended family of small farmers. Yet as he came of age he witnessed the demise of every farm in his family. Over the course of his own life of farming, rural education, organizing, and activism, the stories of his home place have been his constant inspiration, helping him identify with the losses of others and to fight against injustices. In Going Over Home, Thompson shares revelations and reflections, from cattle auctions with his grandfather to community gardens in the coal camps of eastern Kentucky, racial disparities of white and Black landownership in the South to recent work with migrant farm workers from Latin America. In this heartfelt first-person narrative, Thompson unpacks our country’s agricultural myths and addresses the history of racism and wealth inequality and how they have come to bear on our nation’s rural places and their people.

Booklist Editors’ Choice “Best Books of 2019”

Charles D. Thompson, Jr., is the author or editor of six previous books, including Border Odyssey: Travels Along the U.S./Mexico Divide. He has also directed six documentary films, all of which have focused on rural life either in the United States or Latin America. His latest film, produced by Farm Aid in 2017, is Homeplace Under Fire. It concerns the thirty-year history of farm advocacy as supported by Willie Nelson and others. Currently Thompson is at work on a new film about Appalachian small farming. Thompson is the Professor of the Practice of Cultural Anthropology and Documentary Studies at Duke University. He’s also a champion of a number of community causes that center on food, farming, and justice.