Don’t Tell’em You’re Cold: a Memoir of Poverty and Resilience is an uplifting story of survival from abject poverty, set in the hills and coal camps of southern West Virginia. Katherine Manley and her family faced extreme challenges and struggles with ingenuity and traditional Appalachian stoicism. Beyond the poverty, other obstacles compounded Katherine’s life: a severely disabled father, and a mother who struggled with the day-to-day survival. On a cool October morning, she left in a taxi and never returned, leaving 14-year-old Katherine to take care of her father and raise her siblings in her mother’s stead. Katherine went on to become an award-winning teacher, paying forward her hard-learned lessons to thousands of lucky students. This is a story of triumph that encourages everyone to never give up.
Many times while growing up, Kathy Manley experienced the shame of poverty. Shame that kept her from inviting friends to the family’s shabby house filled with dumpster-salvaged furniture. Shame when a teacher took up a collection from classmates so Kathy could attend a football game. The real shame, however, is that any family in this wealthy country lacks adequate food. The real shame is that our social safety net is so inadequate. Don’t Tell ’em You’re Cold (Mountain State Press, 2019) is a powerful, moving memoir about growing up in southern West Virginia, one that is painful to read and, at the same time, illustrates the determination of its author to transcend poverty. Manley had an irrepressible belief that one day life would get better and the will to make it happen. This memoir was a semi-finalist in the William Faulkner Writing Competition, an honor well-deserved.
Manley’s story reads much like Jeannette Walls’s Glass Castle, yet her family differs from Walls’s in important ways.
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