5 insightful Appalachian books that aren’t a “hillbilly elegy”

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Before entering politics, vice presidential candidate Senator JD Vance rose to fame with his book, Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis, in which he painted a polarizing picture of Appalachia. The book landed on the New York Times bestseller list, but some critics accused Vance of perpetuating stereotypes about a region made up primarily of poor, rural white people.

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Professor and former Kentucky poet laureate Frank X Walker coined the term Affrilachia in the 1990s to summarize the cultural contributions of black Americans living in Appalachia. He also co-founded the Affrilachian Poets collective, which included major writers such as Nikki Finney and Nikki Giovanni, who “still produces some of the region’s best poetry,” Kendra Winchester said on Book Riot. Walker’s collection of poems is an ode to a community often left out of the telling of the region’s rich cultural history. His childhood in Kentucky inspired some poems, while others consider his present and “keep coming back to the question of what it means to be black in Appalachia,” Winchester said. Order here.

If you’re looking for a book that’s a direct response to some of the more problematic aspects of “Hillbilly Elegy,” historian Elizabeth Catte’s “What You’re Getting Wrong About Appalachia” is a solid answer. The East Tennessean’s first nonfiction book examines “what the media (and the stereotypes it creates) get wrong about Appalachia” and is a “primer on art, literature and politics from the region,” said People Magazine. Catte’s book “deconstructs the stereotypes that govern how we use and abuse the underclass” and “digs deep into the Trump-era meme that Appalachia is a ‘white ghetto’ that votes and acts against its own interests,” said Appalachian author Leah Hampton in the Los Angeles Times. Order here.

In “The Prettiest Star,” Carter Sickels tells the story of a young gay man in the final stages of HIV who returns to Appalachian, Ohio, in the early years of the AIDS epidemic. After leaving home to live an authentic life in New York City, Brian Jackson returns to live out the last days of his days in a city where “people think homosexuality is a sin and the disease is a punishment from God,” said Kirkus Reviews. Sickels’ characters are “painfully flawed and entirely believably human in their weaknesses,” Kirkus Reviews added. “This brutal honesty, expressed in finely crafted prose, makes for an unforgettable and disturbing novel.” Order here.

Appalachian literature has a long, rich history, and this anthology brings together some of those works in a collection that represents the facets of Appalachian culture. The expansive anthology “serves up the region’s iconic talents” in “appetizing portions to entice the reader to seek out their longer works,” said author Barbara Kingsolver in The New York TimesThe collection’s “comprehensive scope” spans from “Native American oral traditions, slave stories and work songs” through the 20th century to a “modern chorus of gay and straight, white, black and indigenous voices,” Kingsolver said. The anthology will “dispel the stereotype of Appalachia as a boring monoculture.” Order here.

Speaking of Kingsolver: The bestselling author’s Pulitzer Prize-winning book “Demon Copperhead” portrays the hero of Charles Dickens’ “David Copperfield” as a young man struggling in the poverty of today’s southern Appalachians. In what The Washington Post Kingsolver used the “fire of this boy’s mind to illuminate – and scorch – the darkest corners of our country,” the Post wrote. With “Demon Copperhead,” Kingsolver has “proven her best demonstration yet of a novel’s ability to simultaneously entertain, move and argue for reform.” Much of this comes from how “deftly Demon’s experience is interwoven with the tragedy of opioid addiction in the United States.” Order here.

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topicnews · August 26, 2024

5 insightful Appalachian books that aren’t a “hillbilly elegy”

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