Why this word is great
AFFRILACHIAN — [Adjective] Of or pertaining to black people in Appalachia and their culture. A blend of African (pertaining to Africa or its people) and Appalachian (relating to the Appalachian region or its inhabitants), coined by poet Frank X Walker in 1991. Unlike "Appalachian" (which flattens the region into a monochrome myth of hillfolk and hollers) or "African-American" (which stretches too wide to hold the particular grit of mountain soil), "Affrilachian" insists on belonging where history has often erased it. It is the calloused hands of a coal miner whose lineage traces to Senegal, the banjo’s twang remembering its West African ancestors, the quiet defiance of a family Bible whose margins hold names that census takers never recorded—proof that place, like memory, is layered and stubborn.