What You Are Getting Wrong About Appalachia

In 2016, headlines declared Appalachia ground zero for America’s “forgotten tribe” of white working class voters. Journalists flocked to the region to extract sympathetic profiles of families devastated by poverty, abandoned by establishment politics, and eager to consume cheap campaign promises. What You Are Getting Wrong About Appalachia is a frank assessment of America’s recent fascination with the people and problems of the region. The book analyzes trends in contemporary writing on Appalachia, presents a brief history of Appalachia with an eye toward unpacking Appalachian stereotypes, and provides examples of writing, art, and policy created by Appalachians as opposed to for Appalachians. The book offers a must-needed insider’s perspective on the region.

• Ramp Hollow: The Ordeal of Appalachia
• Lost Mountain: A Year in the Vanishing Wilderness Radical Strip Mining and the Devastation of Appalachia
• Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis
• Whiskey & Ribbons: A Novel
• They Say in Harlan County: An Oral History (Oxford Oral History Series)
• Uneven Ground: Appalachia since 1945
• Night Comes to the Cumberlands: A Biography of a Depressed Area
• White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America
• Strange as This Weather Has Been: A Novel
• Storming Heaven: A Novel