Take Me Home

by Bethany Jarmul

44 pages, Paperback

Published June 25, 2024

Reviews

[Angela Joynes · Rating 5 out of 5]

The collection of essays, Take Me Home, by Bethany Jarmul is a deceptive little volume of delights. It may look like a small volume at first, but it is absolutely bursting with captivating content from cover to cover. Bethany writes with raw honesty and candor from her perspective as an Appalachian woman from West Virginia.

Many of us can relate to leaving rural homes and poverty behind, leaving for big universities, bigger cities, more intellectual challenges, for the arts, and for personal growth. And many of us, like Bethany, do not realize everything we are desperately homesick for until we’ve gone. Her short essays, heart breaking at times, hold little fireflies of glittering, lyrical language that draw in the reader. Essays in the voice of a poet from her birth onward.

I highly recommend this beautifully designed memoir. Each essay builds on the previous one with an unmistakable cohesion I very much appreciate. Thank you Bethany for sharing Take Me Home with the world.

[Mary Keating · Rating 5 out of 5]

Don't let the small size of this chapbook of short vignettes fool you into thinking larger than life topics aren't contained inside. From the first story to the last, we are carried through the arc of Bethany's journey from her roots in Appalachia to big city life. Without spelling it out for the reader, she lets us come to our own conclusions of what really is important, as she did in her poignant, lyrical memoir.
We can all relate to the feeling that our hometowns are too small to contain our big dreams as we spread our wings to discover new places and ways of being. How we often choose to not disappoint our parents instead of choosing what we think will make us happier as so vividly shown in "Dirt-Road Dressing Shop."
Reading Bethany's stories of growing up, leaving home, and visiting home again, brought back so many memories of that time in my own life--despite the fact I grew up under completely different circumstances. Her stories resonant with us on a universal level because the authentic feelings they convey aren't confined to one area of the country, or to one social economic class. Her stories remind us that we share more than in unites us than what divides us. Something we should all remember as election day draws near.

[Kresha Warnock · Rating 5 out of 5]

This gentle,respectful little chapbook is a delight. It opens a window into Bethany's relationship with her West Virginia roots and is a lovely read.