This study examines cultural issues surrounding family cancer communication in Appalachia, providing insight into participants’ communication choices regarding their illness within their families. Stories of 29 female Appalachian cancer survivors from Northeast Tennessee and Southwest Virginia were collected via a mixed methods approach in either a day-long story circle (N=26) or an in-depth interview (N=3). Qualitative content analysis was used to identify unique barriers to family cancer communication in Appalachia. Two barriers emerged: 1) the health of other family members and 2) cancer in a “taboo” area. These findings suggest that Appalachian female cancer survivors struggle with similar issues as survivors outside of the region regarding family cancer communication. However, there appear to be additional barriers to family cancer communication for Appalachian women that may be a result of cultural norms of the region.

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Excerpt: In the latter half of 2012 the communication discipline lost two pioneering scholrs when H.L. "Bud" Goodhall, Jr., and Nick Trujillo died within months of each other.

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Excerpt: Contributors detail what it means to be an academic mother and to think about academic motherhood, while also exploring both the personal and specific institutional challenges academic women face, the multifaceted strategies different academic women are implementing to manage those challenges, and investigating different theoretical possibilities for how we think about academic motherhood.

Nearly everyone I know has a relationship with something in popular culture, whether it is Buffy the Vampire Slayer, amassing The Astonishing X-Men comics, or collecting every version of every Star Wars movie. Relationships and pop culture: couldn’t that make an autoethnography? This is a short version of my relationship with a band, Daniel Amos. I am not in Daniel Amos. I don’t know the members of the band (although I am Facebook friends with them now). I first heard them in 1982 serendipitously. Or maybe it was destiny. Either way, they opened my eyes to the wonders, doubts, and excesses of my life, critiqued my faith, and brought me joy. I feel like I know them, and they me. Thirty-one years after first hearing them, I realize our relationship is one of the longest I have had. We grew up and are growing older together.

Excerpt: I am wearied by sexual repression in the family. I find parental obsession with virginity for its own sake tiresome. I am troubled by the neighbour boy who, when playing some form of truth or dare, dared my daughter, twice his age, to jump in the air and grab her penis; she says, “That’s going to be tricky, since I don’t have one.” He says, “Really? Why not?” He was seven. My own son figured this out in the bathroom with me at around two.

Excerpt: As both a daughter to a mother and a mother to a daughter, I have lived, and pushed against, and been formed by, the profound truth about mother-daughter relationships suggested by this book's title: it's complicated.