When Hillbilly Elegy came out, it landed like a thunderclap, perhaps because it was released during the 2016 election and was perceived as an explanation of the inexplicable popularity of Donald Trump. I put it on hold at the library, but before I read it, I listened to a few interviews with him on television and canceled my hold on the book. It was clear he was just one more advocate for abandoning the poor, only this pathologizing the white working class of Appalachia based solely on his own family experience. Nonetheless, the stereotypes in Vance’s book have proven popular and enduring, so I was very interested in reading Appalachian Reckoning, a collection of responses to the book, from academic rebuttals and personal essays to poetry and photography.

From the Protestant Work Ethic to the Prosperity Gospel, the god everyone worships is wealth and the greatest sin is poverty. America’s civic religion is Horation Algerism. This makes it very profitable to comfort the comfortable by telling them they need not feel compassion for those who struggle because it’s their own fault, their bad choices, their addiction to drugs, their failure to get a good job, and their cultural poverty. We hear it again with every generation and Vance hit a sweet spot just in time. We who are on the left and right can have smug contempt for Trump voters because they are uneducated, racist, lazy, hillbillies on opioids. According to R. C. Hutton points out “the book is aimed not at that underclass (few books are), but rather at a middle- and upper-class readership more than happy to learn that white American poverty has nothing to do with them or with any structural problems in American economy and society and everything to do with poor white folks’ inherent vices.” Yup.

Appalachian Reckoning restores the variety, vitality, and value of the people of Appalachia. The book includes several poems and photos and personal essays recounting the richness of that culture. The people of Appalachia are not culturally deficient. How much of our cultural heritage is sourced in those mountains? These are people who dared strike against the coal barons, whose Peabody coal strike is memorialized in song and film, and whose culture has fostered the Foxfire Magazine and book series (My parents had all the books.) Country music would not exist without its Appalachian origins.

I recommend reading Appalachian Reckoning in small bites rather than all at once because a collection of articles and essays critiquing one book naturally becomes a bit repetitive. How many ways can you say that Hillbilly Elegy works as a memoir, but as sociology, it fails? Nonetheless, I hope every person who read the original book would read this rebuttal because this book sees the humanity and complexity of a region and does not do the disservice of telling people whose jobs have been erased, whose land and rivers have been poisoned, and who are in despair that they problems they have are because they are weak, lazy, and ignorant.

Appalachian Reckoning will be released on March 1st. I received a copy of Appalachian Reckoning from the publisher through NetGalley.

Appalachian Reckoning at West Virginia University Press
Anthony Harkins faculty page
Meredith McCarroll Chronicle Vitae

https://tonstantweaderreviews.wordpress.com/2019/02/23/9781946684806/ ( )

A thorough compilation of various reflections on life and the experience of Appalachia and responses to the portrayal of Appalachia and its culture in J.D. Vance's "Hillbilly Elegy."

The response to the book is generally critical: the contributors recognize the work as reflective of Vance's personal experience, but they (rightly) take him to task for reinforcing stereotypes in his work, reducing a group of people to a cultural caricature, completely neglecting the experiences of people of color and others in the region, and using the whole story to push a particular political ideology without a full reckoning of the many factors which have led to dysfunction in many Appalachian communities. The authors are also critical of the response to Vance's work, since it tends to reinforce stereotypes and the socio-cultural hierarchies already in place: look at all those poor little people over there in their dysfunctional culture; this is why Trump was elected; etc. A few of the contributors do well at tracing how Vance's work is just one in a series which has done the same thing to the way people look at Appalachia.

The work instead embodies a much more holistic and nuanced portrayal of Appalachia, from those who grew up and stayed, from those who grew up and left, and those who grew up, left, and returned. We hear the experiences of people of color in Appalachia. We hear from those who experienced its religion or the lack thereof; we hear from those who grew up in dysfunction and from those whose family lives were healthier. People's flaws are very apparent - but we also see many of their virtues, their perseverance, and the ability to look at the culture without pathologizing it.

One walks away from this book with a much better view of what Appalachia is all about, although even here the work is still somewhat academic, written by what is ultimately the elite to explain the land to the elite elsewhere. But so such studies go.

If you really liked "Hillbilly Elegy," you owe it to intellectual honesty and integrity to consider this work and use it to balance how one views and speaks of Appalachia.

**--galley received as part of early review program ( )