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"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."--Back cover.… (more)
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The response to the book is generally critical: the contributors recognize the work as reflective of Vance's personal
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