Appalachian ReckoningAppalachian Reckoning

"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? [This book] 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 [here] 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, [this book] makes clear Appalachia's intellectual vitality, spiritual richness, and progressive possibilities."--Back cover.