Appalachian reckoning : a region responds to Hillbilly Elegy

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Title:

Appalachian reckoning : a region responds to Hillbilly Elegy

Author:

Harkins, Anthony, editor.

McCarroll, Meredith, editor.

Summary:

"With hundreds of thousands of copies sold, a Ron Howard movie in the works, and the rise of its author as a media personality, J.D. Vance's Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis has defined Appalachia for much of the nation. What about Hillbilly Elegy accounts for this explosion of interest during this period of political turmoil? Why have its ideas raised so much controversy? And how can debates about the book catalyze new, more inclusive political agendas for the region's future? Appalachian Reckoning is a retort, at turns rigorous, critical, angry, and hopeful, to the long shadow Hillbilly Elegy has cast over the region and its imagining. But it also moves beyond Hillbilly Elegy to allow Appalachians from varied backgrounds to tell their own diverse and complex stories through an imaginative blend of scholarship, prose, poetry, and photography. The essays and creative work collected in Appalachian Reckoning provide a deeply personal portrait of a place that is at once culturally rich and economically distressed, unique and typically American. Complicating simplistic visions that associate the region almost exclusively with death and decay, Appalachian Reckoning makes clear Appalachia's intellectual vitality, spiritual richness, and progressive possibilities."-- Back cover

Edition:

First edition.

Contents:

Introduction: Why this book?

Considering Hillbilly Elegy. Interrogating. Hillbilly elitism / Social capital / Once upon a time in "Trumpalachia": Hillbilly Elegy, personal choice, and the blame game / Stereotypes on the syllabus: exploring Hillbilly Elegy's use as an instructional text at colleges and universities / Benham, Kentucky, coal miner / Wise County, Virginia, landscape / Panning for gold: A reflection of life from Appalachia / Will the real hillbilly please stand up? Urban Appalachian migration and culture seen through the lens of Hillbilly Elegy / What Hillbilly Elegy reveals about race in twenty-first-century America / Prisons are not innovation / Down and out in Middletown and Jackson: drugs, dependency, and decline in J.D. Vance's Capitalist Realism / Responding. Keep your "elegy": the Appalachia I know is very much alive / HE said/SHE said / The hillbilly miracle and the fall / Elegies / In defense of J.D. Vance / It's crazy around here, I don't know what to do about It, and I'm just a kid / "Falling in love," Balsam Bald, the Blue Ridge Parkway, 1982 / Black hillbillies have no time for elegies

Beyond Hillbilly Elegy. Nothing familiar / History / Tether and plow / On and on: Appalachian accent and academic power / Olivia's ninth birthday party / Kentucky, coming and going / Resistance, or our most worthy habits / Notes on a mountain man / These stories sustain me: the wyrd-ness of my Appalachia / Watch children / The mower-1933 / Consolidate and salvage / How Appalachian I am / Aunt Rita along the King Coal Highway, Mingo County, West Virginia / Holler / Loving to fool with things / Antebellum cookbook / How to make cornbread, or thoughts on being an Appalachian from Pennsylvania who calls Virginia home but now lives in Georgia / Tonglen for my Mother / Olivia at the intersection / Appalachian apophenia, or the psychogeography of home / Canary dirge / Poet, priest, and "poor white trash"

Physical Description:

ix, 421 pages : illustrations ; 22 cm

Genre:

Essays.

Personal Subject:

Vance, J. D. Hillbilly elegy.

Subject Term:

Appalachians (People) -- Social life and customs.

Geographic Term:

Appalachian Region -- Social conditions.

Appalachian Region -- Economic conditions.

Author(s):

Harkins, Anthony,

McCarroll, Meredith,

Publisher:

West Virginia University Press,

Publication Date:

2019

ISBN:

9781946684783

9781946684790

Publication Information:

Morgantown : West Virginia University Press, 2019.

Call Number:

305.5 APPALACHIAN

Holds: Copies:

Available:*

Item Barcode	Collection	Call Number	Status	Item Holds
33607003527275	Adult Nonfiction	305.5 APPALACHIAN	Searching... Unknown	Searching... Unavailable

Bound With These Titles

On Order

Summary

2020 American Book Award winner, Walter & Lillian Lowenfels Criticism Award

Weatherford Award winner, nonfiction

With hundreds of thousands of copies sold, a Ron Howard movie in the works, and the rise of its author as a media personality, J. D. Vance's Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis has defined Appalachia for much of the nation. What about Hillbilly Elegy accounts for this explosion of interest during this period of political turmoil? Why have its ideas raised so much controversy? And how can debates about the book catalyze new, more inclusive political agendas for the region's future?

Appalachian Reckoning is a retort, at turns rigorous, critical, angry, and hopeful, to the long shadow Hillbilly Elegy has cast over the region and its imagining. But it also moves beyond Hillbilly Elegy to allow Appalachians from varied backgrounds to tell their own diverse and complex stories through an imaginative blend of scholarship, prose, poetry, and photography. The essays and creative work collected in Appalachian Reckoning provide a deeply personal portrait of a place that is at once culturally rich and economically distressed, unique and typically American. Complicating simplistic visions that associate the region almost exclusively with death and decay, Appalachian Reckoning makes clear Appalachia's intellectual vitality, spiritual richness, and progressive possibilities.

Author Notes

Anthony Harkins is a professor of history at Western Kentucky University in Bowling Green, Kentucky, where he teaches courses in popular culture and twentieth-century United States history and American studies. He is the author of Hillbilly: A Cultural History of an American Icon.

Meredith McCarroll is the director of writing and rhetoric at Bowdoin College, where she teaches courses in writing, American literature, and film. She is the author of Unwhite: Appalachia, Race, and Film.

Reviews (1)

Publisher's Weekly Review

This impassioned collection of Appalachian regional art, essays, and poetry responds directly to J.D. Vance's bestselling memoir about an impoverished family awash in crassness, violence, and drug abuse. Each writer or photographer seeks to provide either a counterpoint to Vance's story or to demonstrate that not all Appalachians are uneducated hillbillies. Appalachian intellectuals such as T.R.C. Hutton, William H. Turner, and Lisa R. Pruitt delve into intricate stories about race, education, and post-coal migration, exploring both the identity of the white "hillbilly" and the black Appalachians virtually ignored in Elegy. Some essays combine statistics with personal stories of hardship, compassion, and perseverance; others hew to a conversational account of the author's family. Lou Murrey's photograph of diverse people protesting a federal prison in Kentucky and Roger May's stunning portrait of his aunt serve as a striking counterpoint to Elegy's depiction of an apathetic people. Vance's belief that Appalachians committed themselves to failure loses traction when faced with these accounts of historical context, company towns, and current positive developments. As the editors Harkins and McCarroll note, while Vance offers one bleak "window" into the extensive multistate region, this valuable collection shows resilience, hope, and belonging are in Appalachia, too. (Mar.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.