Weedmonkey

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Growing up during the Depression and forced to live in coal mining camps throughout Appalachia, Virgie Hopkins is subjected to child molestation, the KKK, murder, homelessness, starvation, and ridicule for being the daughter of the town whore.

Virgie grows up hating her mother, who was taken away when she was nine years old, and while she was gone, she and her brother were put into foster care, starved, and abused.

When her mother returned, she did not know her husband or her children, and Virgie could not understand why she had changed.

At 16, Virgie made the decision to leave Kentucky, and the only life she had ever known, after discovering her prostitute mother was having an affair with the young boy Virgie loved and planned to marry.

Filled with hatred, resentment, and shame for the woman she called Mom, it was not until her mother’s funeral, did she learn the horrible truth, the reason for her change, and the reason why she became the town whore, a weedmonkey.

A haunting true story…

Weedmonkey is the true story of my mother’s life growing up in the coal mining camps of Appalachia during the Depression as the daughter of the town prostitute.

What’s unique about this story is that my mom began writing it when I was a child. I knew every name, every face, every town, every hardship, and every abuse. I was so familiar with this book, it was as though I had grown up with my mom, side by side.

A Deathbed Promise Kept

She couldn’t finish the story,
so she gave it to me—
a daughter with her mother’s voice,
carrying the pain,
the strength,
and the promise
that no one is too broken
to rise.

• WINNER Golden Book Awards Reader’s Choice 2018
• 2nd Place WINNER Golden Book Awards 2018
• WINNER Honorable Mention in Memoirs/Non-Ficiton 2017

My uncle and my mother.

Weedmonkey cover

My grandfather Jesse and grandmother Maude, my uncle Gerald, and my mother Ruby Victoria.

My grandfather Jesse.

My great-grandmother Mallie Victoria and two of her children. I am named after her.

My great=grandmother Dicie and her children. She was a full blooded Cherokee Indian.

My mother who changed her name to Victoria.

Red Creek flooded. This area is mentioned in the book Weedmonkey.