The most damning critique of Hillbilly Elegy. —Nancy Isenberg, New York Review of Books
“A spiky polemic.”—Benjamin Wallace-Wells, The New Yorker
“An unflinching indictment of the dominant narrative of American rurality. . . . The perfect primer for readers seeking factual, realistic portrayals of the rural and working class experience.”—Leah Hampton, Los Angeles Times
“A bold refusal to submit to stereotype.” —Kirkus Reviews
Succeeds in providing a richer, more complex view of a much-maligned region. —Publishers Weekly
What are we getting wrong about Appalachia? A lot. And we are not just getting it wrong because we do not know. We are getting it wrong because reckoning with the reality of the Appalachia people and culture serves a historical project of disdain, distancing, and deliberate disinvestment in our nation. Elizabeth Catte has written an essential guide on how to talk about race, class, gender and the cultural geographies that shape our lives. Our discourse on Appalachia has been used a cudgel, much of it designed to obscure more than it reveals. Catte uses data and lived experiences to reveal an Appalachia that is not some 'othered' out there against which we compare ourselves to make inequality more palatable. This is a necessary antidote to the cyclical mainstream interest in Appalachia as a backwards, white working-class caricature.” —Tressie McMillan Cottom, Professor of Sociology and author of Lower Ed: The Troubling Rise of For-Profit Colleges in the New Economy
A brief, forceful, and necessary correction. —Frank Guan, Bookforum
A necessary response to the bigotry against a much-maligned culture. —Chris Offutt, author, Kentucky Straight
“Fiercely argued and solidly grounded, this an excellent primer on understanding and resisting the common distortions about Appalachia’s past and present.” —Anthony Harkins, author of Hillbilly: A Cultural History of an American Icon
“You couldn't kill this book with a hammer. Come and watch Elizabeth Catte clip the hollow wings of little Jimmy Vance. Stay and behold an enlightened vision, a living solidarity found among the strong and varied peoples of this misunderstood land. What You Are Getting Wrong About Appalachia asks Florence Reece's old question: Which side are you on? Some of us are sticking to Appalachia until every battle's won.” —Glenn Taylor, author of The Ballad of Trenchmount Taggart
Highlighting decades of suppressed workers' rights movements, as well as prison facilities that still exploit low-cost labor, Catte expands the perspective on Appalachia. Readers will indeed get more right about this slice of the country after reading her book.” —Cheryl Krocker McKeon, Shelf Awareness
2017-10-17
A terse rebuttal to the vision of Appalachia popularized by J.D. Vance's Hillbilly Elegy (2016).As a historian from East Tennessee whose politics are to the left of Vance's, Catte skewers his "asinine beliefs and associations," which she connects with white-supremacist eugenics and insists do not reflect the rich diversity and often radical activism that she sees in her native region. Vance, she writes, somehow "transforms Elegy from a memoir of a person to the memoir of a culture," a culture that is monolithically white and Scots-Irish, conservative, and culturally backward. In Catte's analysis, much of the growth in the region has come from younger minorities, and most of the problems endemic to it have come from outside corporations that have exploited both its natural resources and its workforce. Furthermore, that power structure has wielded considerable political influence, just as money does elsewhere. Though she finds the term problematic, she says that the model of "internal colony" better explains the region's dynamics, as powerful outside forces control the region's resources and shape its destiny, with the residents becoming mere pawns in their game. In the 2016 presidential election, white voters in the region supported Donald Trump, as conservative white voters did elsewhere, but there was also considerable support for the brand of populism espoused by Bernie Sanders. As for Hillary Clinton's ill-considered comment about how "we're going to put a lot of coal miners and coal companies out of business," Catte writes, "it's not possible for anyone with more than passing knowledge of Appalachia and the coal industry to listen to those comments without cringing, regardless of one's political affiliation." Though Catte's writing is not as colorful as Vance's, her book refuses to allow his version of Appalachia to stand unchallenged.A bold refusal to submit to stereotype.
