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Tag Archives: Appalachia
New book takes on, and takes down, Appalachian Trump Country narratives and elegies
Starting in early 2016, we began to see a phenomenon that later became the Trump Country profile: national (and international) news reporters, parachuting into some Appalachian small town, churning out a think piece about the despair, the poverty, the addiction, … Continue reading
Hillbilly Elegy: Another generalization of Appalachia
All last fall I resisted reading J.D. Vance’s Hillbilly Elegy. The bad reviews I saw from other Appalachians convinced me it would make me mad. In October, I went to a mayoral forum and the women behind me were talking … Continue reading
Appalachia this election year: So many stories, so little depth
The time has come upon us again when reporters for national publications descend upon the poorest parts of Appalachia like locusts to write stories about What is Wrong With the Poor Despairing Rural Hillbilly. This year it is couched as … Continue reading
Can I make peace with “hillbilly”?
A while back, a Facebook friend referred to someone he disliked as a hillbilly. The person was from the mountains and was being a bigot. Hillbilly was the only word for her he used, as if it summed up the … Continue reading
A coal miner’s granddaughter in the Baldwin-Felts house
If you asked my grandfather, he would probably say he loves God, his family and the UMWA, in that order. He spent his working years in the Virginia and West Virginia coalfields, as a miner and then driving a coal … Continue reading
Who should tell our stories?
There’s a story told about old-time musician Tommy Jarrell. In the 1970’s, when people from outside Appalachia discovered Appalachian old-time music and were beating a path to sit with the old men (and women) and hear them play and learn … Continue reading
Lynchings in Southwest Virginia
Recently, the New York Times wrote about a new report (found here) from the Equal Justice Initiative, documenting nearly 4,000 racial lynchings of blacks across the southern states between 1877 and 1950. According to a summary of the EJI report, … Continue reading
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Tagged Appalachia, Equal Justice Initiative, lynching, Southwest Virginia, Tazewell
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Appalachian code switching
Last week NPR started an interesting conversation on Twitter by asking if public radio voices are “too white” and if those white-sounding public radio voices are limiting the audience, shutting out people who don’t necessarily choose to listen to people who … Continue reading