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.

upload/motw_shc_2025_10/shc/Appalachian Reckoning_ A Region - Anthony Harkins.pdf

motw/Appalachian Reckoning_ A Region - Anthony Harkins.pdf

United States, United States of America

First edition, Morgantown, 2019

1st, 2019

producers:
Adobe PDF Library 15.0

Memory of the World Librarian: outernationale

Contents 6
Acknowledgments 10
Introduction: Why This Book? / Anthony Harkins and Meredith McCarroll 12
PART I. CONSIDERING HILLBILLY ELEGY 28
INTERROGATING 30
Hillbilly Elitism / T. R. C. Hutton 32
Social Capital / Jeff Mann / 45
Once Upon a Time in "Trumpalachia": Hillbilly Elegy, Personal Choice, and the Blame Game / Dwight B. Billings 49
Stereotypes on the Syllabus: Exploring Hillbilly Elegy's Use as an Instructional Text at Colleges and Universities / Elizabeth Catte 71
Benham, Kentucky, Coal Miner / Wise County, Virginia, Landscape / Theresa Burriss 91
Panning for Gold: A Reflection of Life from Appalachia / Ricardo Nazario y Colón 95
Will the Real Hillbilly Please Stand Up? Urban Appalachian Migration and Culture Seen through the Lens of Hillbilly Elegy / Roger Guy 97
What Hillbilly Elegy Reveals about Race in Twenty-First-Century America / Lisa R. Pruitt 116
Prisons Are Not Innovation / Lou Murrey 145
Down and Out in Middletown and Jackson: Drugs, Dependency, and Decline in J. D. Vance's Capitalist Realism / Travis Linnemann and Corina Medley 147
RESPONDING 166
Keep Your "Elegy": The Appalachia I Know Is Very Much Alive / Ivy Brashear 168
HE Said/SHE Said / Crystal Good 180
The Hillbilly Miracle and the Fall / Michael E. Maloney 182
Elegies / Dana Wildsmith 199
In Defense of J. D. Vance / Kelli Hansel Haywood 200
It's Crazy Around Here, I Don't Know What to Do about It, and I'm Just a Kid / Allen Johnson 210
"Falling in Love," Balsam Bald, the Blue Ridge Parkway, 1982 / Danielle Dulken 237
Black Hillbillies Have No Time for Elegies / William H. Turner 240
PART II. BEYOND HILLBILLY ELEGY 256
Nothing Familiar / Jesse Graves 257
History / Jesse Graves 258
Tether and Plow / Jesse Graves 259
On and On: Appalachian Accent and Academic Power / Meredith McCarroll 260
Olivia's Ninth Birthday Party / Rebecca Kiger 265
Kentucky, Coming and Going / Kirstin L. Squint 267
Resistance, or Our Most Worthy Habits / Richard Hague 279
Notes on a Mountain Man / Jeremy B. Jones 281
These Stories Sustain Me: The Wyrd-ness of My Appalachia / Edward Karshner 289
Watch Children / Luke Travis 301
The Mower-1933 / Robert Morgan 303
Consolidate and Salvage / Chelsea Jack 310
How Appalachian I Am / Robert Gipe 320
Aunt Rita along the King Coal Highway, Mingo County, West Virginia / Roger May 331
Holler / Keith S. Wilson 333
Loving to Fool with Things / Rachel Wise 342
Antebellum Cookbook / Kelly Norman Ellis 361
How to Make Cornbread, or Thoughts on Being an Appalachian from Pennsylvania Who Calls Virginia Home but Now Lives in Georgia / Jim Minick 367
Tonglen for My Mother / Linda Parsons 381
Olivia at the Intersection / Meg Wilson 385
Appalachian Apophenia, or The Psychogeography of Home / Jodie Childers 387
Canary Dirge / Dale Marie Prenatt 400
Poet, Priest, and "Poor White Trash" / Elizabeth Hadaway 401
List of Contributors 412
Sources and Permissions 423
Index 424

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.
**
Review
"In this illuminating and wide-ranging collection, the authors do more than just debunk the simplistic portrayal of white poverty found in Hillbilly Elegy . They profoundly engage with the class, racial, and political reasons behind a Silicon Valley millionaire's sudden triumph as the most popular spokesman for what one contributor cleverly calls 'Trumpalachia.' This book is a powerful corrective to the imperfect stories told of the white working class, rural life, mountain folk, and the elusive American Dream." - Nancy Isenberg, author of White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America
"So often the song of this place has been reduced to a single off-key voice out of tune and out of touch. Appalachian Reckoning is the sound of the choir, pitch perfect in its capturing of these mountains and their people. This book is not only beautiful, but needed." - David Joy, author of The Line That Held Us
"This edited volume continues the rich Appalachian studies tradition of pushing back against one-sided caricatures of Appalachian people. The essays, poems, and photo-essays in this book demonstrate the diversity of Appalachian perspectives on the serious problems facing our nation as well as the role that myths about Appalachia continue to play in US policy debates. This is a must-read for everyone who read (or refused to read) J. D. Vance's deeply flawed, best-selling memoir , Hillbilly Elegy. " - Shaunna Scott, University of Kentucky

In Hillbilly elegy, J.D. Vance described how his family moved from poverty to an upwardly mobile clan while navigating the collective demons of the past. The book has come to define Appalachia for much of the nation. This collection of essays is a retort, at turns rigorous, critical, angry, and hopeful, to the long shadow cast over the region and its imagining. But it also moves beyond Vance's book to allow Appalachians to tell their own diverse and complex stories of a place that is at once culturally rich and economically distressed, unique and typically American. -- adapted from back cover

2025-10-27