What You Are Getting Wrong about Appalachia

by Elizabeth Catte

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.

Genres: Nonfiction, History, Politics, Audiobook, Sociology, Social Justice, American History

200 pages, Paperback

First published February 6, 2018

About the author

Elizabeth Catte is a writer and historian from East Tennessee. She holds a PhD in public history from Middle Tennessee State University and is the co-owner of Passel, a historical consulting and development company.

Reviews

[Garen · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’m going to quit my job and walk the earth with a knapsack full of copies of this book and hand them out whenever I hear someone mention hillbilly elegy.

[Carrie · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you felt at all compelled to read Hillbilly Elegy, do yourself a favor by reading Elizabeth Catte's work. She convincingly tears apart many of the stereotypes Vance perpetuates, giving a much more nuanced history of the region, from the vast exploitation of land, people, and resources to the resulting labor movements and radical acts of rebellion. Recent media coverage portraying parts of Appalachia as backward and tragically impoverished is nothing new, and she does a better job than most other writers I've read illustrating why these stereotypes have led to mistrust and caused genuine pain. She connects Vance's ideas on a distinct Scots-Irish heritage, through the sources and particular terminology he uses, to a much larger, more disturbing trend of white supremacist eugenics, showing instead that Appalachia is an amalgam of different (though largely European) ethnic groups.

One of my biggest issues with Hillbilly Elegy (and I had a lot of them) was the way Vance intentionally and explicitly sidestepped race before dismissing it as a non-factor. In reading her attempt to illustrate the diversity and progressive aspects of Appalachia, I was a little worried that Catte would sidestep the issue, too, in favor of class. Thankfully, she doesn't - while she doesn't necessarily explore race in depth, she does show that portraying Appalachia as a monolith erases flourishing movements like Black Lives Matter and prison abolition. Her point is less that racism in Appalachia isn't an issue (she's clear that it's there), but that racism in other parts of the country is underexplored. As she puts it, we're all in Trump country. There's still a great deal more to be said, but that isn't her point here, and I felt that was mostly fair.

Well worth your time, especially for Appalachians like me who wrestle with stereotypes we have felt are partly true (bigotry is very, very real) while knowing it's not the whole truth.

[notgettingenough · Rating 4 out of 5]

To begin with a mea culpa. Even though I knew Catte was fighting against the stereotypes, I still expected this book to be a sort of coffee table book one might find described in Stuff White People Like . A sumptuous publication in large format comprising artistic black and white photos of...weird poor people. Nice white people could talk about how awful it all is and how they wish they could do something about it. (Pass the organic vegan caviar, please.)

What did I 'know' about Appalachia before I read this? Image one: said black and white pictures. Image two: fiddle music. Image three: Deliverance. So yeah, not just fiddles, banjoes too.

As a consequence of this, if somebody had asked me, I would have guessed that Appalachia was small. It fits the homogeneity of the sense of the place. See? Place. Place is small. It's a thing that's clearly identifiable. Wrong word. Wrong, wrong, wrong.

One of the first things I found out, opening this small book, is that Appalachia is huge, encompassing many States and many millions of people. It would seem obvious, just from that fact, that it isn't going to be homogeneous. This book is out to fight that, explaining how it has happened so that you understand why you've been duped.

It's sort of an enraged lament, explaining the process of how we got to a particular point in US history which I hadn't heard of before I read this book. Hillbilly Elegy. On Goodreads over 60 of my friends have read it, compared with a tally of four for this volume. Let's lament just a little louder then, as we realise how many people have bought into the prejudice of Vance's best seller.

There is a book coming out soon, Unwhite: Appalachia, Race and Film by Meredith McCarroll who says “Its central argument is that Appalachian people in cinema have been portrayed as phenotypically white, but using the same tropes that have long been used to portray non-whites in film.” If only that were it, films getting it wrong. The heartbreaking point of Catte's volume is that this is a universal tendency, founded long ago, entrenched by those whose interests are served by it, and supported by the academic community which might largely hang its collective head in shame.

One of the more wrenching moments of a book which is full of them, is to find out that at Catte's alma mater, not only has Hillbilly Elegy become required reading, but it has been put together with a deal to buy one of those books of photos which maintains the false image. For Catte on Hillbilly Elegy, which will give you a taste of What You Are Getting Wrong About Appalachia go here. Eugenicists like Vance's message. It makes you wonder what sort of educational culture presides in the US of A.

This is no reference book. It's venting spleen, written in a way I assume she would not write with her historian's cap on. There are no references, but a detailed reading list for where to go next. In a short, small form, it succinctly puts the reader in the shoes of those who live in this vast area. She makes you part of the action as she describes the long history of labour fighting capitalism, of capitalism cozying up with the academic sociologists and such like, of environmentalists - that is to say, ordinary people turned into activists by their foes - fighting for the preservation of the sweetness of the mountain areas as they are destroyed by coal production, amongst other evils. You watch the pregnant woman next to you being kicked by strike breakers. You watch sociologists agreeing with capitalists who want people off their own land, that it is for their own good to take them from their homes. You watch ordinary people being literally defined as cases for forced sterilisation because it makes it a moral imperative to take them from their homes, whether that be to rip mountains apart to mine coal, or to preserve areas for rich white people to take their vacations.

If you want a nuanced, if angry, view of this exploited expanse of the US, this is an excellent place to start, and it will guide you as to where to go next.

[Karin · Rating 2 out of 5]

She gives voice to my issues with "Hillbilly Elegy" ("In Elegy...white Appalachians take on the qualities of an oppressed minority much in the same way that conservative individuals view African Americans: as people who have suffered hardships, but ultimately are only holding themselves back. This construction allows conservative intellectuals to talk around stale stereotypes of African Americans and other nonwhite individuals while holding up the exaggerated degradations of a white group thought to defy evidence of white privilege."), BUT she is in DIRE need of an editor. Maybe two or three editors. Stories start halfway through and expect you to know references to the region's history. Many references are not explained. Many of her points begin and end somewhere in the middle. A lot of her language feels constructed and academic. She makes valid points that an entire region of 10-20 million people can not be classified by one archetype, but if she could make those points much simpler and more straight forward, she would have a much stronger book.

[Cinda · Rating 5 out of 5]

Anyone who has read Hillbilly Elegy owes it to him/herself to follow up with this book. Better yet, skip Elegy and read this. As far as I can tell, Vance never actually lived in Appalachia. Not only was Catte born and raised in Tennessee, but she is steeped in the economic history of the region. She has strong opinions as well as the academic chops to back them up. Unlike Vance, she achieved success while maintaining an abiding respect and regard for the people she grew up with.

[Annie · Rating 3 out of 5]

As I mentioned in my review of Hillbilly Elegy, I spent part of my childhood in Appalachian Ohio, and the rest of it two counties outside it. My father’s family is from deep Appalachia and have been coal miners for a century. While I would not identify as Appalachian, Appalachian Ohio is intimately familiar to me.

So I take Catte’s point. JD Vance *does* present a homogenized view of Appalachia, and Appalachia is certainly an area that cannot be captured with one image.

However, he never said “all of Appalachia is this” (in my memory). He grew up in a certain area of Appalachian Ohio, and presented his views on it. I don’t think it was necessarily clear that he meant that, say, Georgian Appalachia is the same.

Of course, some of the things that JD Vance talks about are true of nearly all of Appalachia. And denying those things doesn’t change the reality.

Sure, it has some of the fastest growing minority populations—but that doesn’t mean it’s (racially) a diverse place. 62% of Americans are non-Hispanic white. By comparison, other than in Mississippi and Alabama’s Appalachian regions, Appalachia is still over 90% non-Hispanic white. [And for that matter, JD Vance specifically talked about how minorities are moving into the area and working jobs that he believed white Appalachians were unwilling to get or keep, which he postulates is what motivated them to vote for a racist president].

Sure, poverty is an aggressive stereotype of Appalachia, and there are plenty of Appalachians who are not impoverished. Of course, poverty rates in Appalachia are higher than other areas of the country (this difference is particularly obvious when you compare poverty rates in the Appalachian region of a state to the same state’s non-Appalachian region).

Basically, it feels like Catte is angry at Vance for pointing out all of Appalachia’s problems, and then on the other hand, angry at him for not recognizing the strength of Appalachians’ resilience in the face of those problems.

There is no question, to me, that Appalachia is populated with a huge number of brave, bold activists and other brilliant, talented people, or that it has a rich cultural history. Much of the book talks about that, but she’s preaching to the choir in terms of me. There’s also no question that the violent union struggles, including the mine wars, improved worker conditions across the nation and made some difference in employee rights and activism.

Catte wants to make it clear that the problems of Appalachia are not their own. Of course they’re not. Of course they’ve been exploited by the outrageous tax breaks the government gives to corporations who poison their air, their water, and their food. Of course that exploitation is done in order to give the rest of the country cheap products. Of course it’s not due to laziness.

That is one thing I’ll disagree with JD Vance strongly on: he strongly implies white Appalachians are merely lazy, and I think that’s oversimplifying and accusatory. I do think he fails to recognize the way that corporations have caused many of the region’s social problems.

I think this book is very important for its main theme: blaming Appalachia entirely for Trump is not only misplaced, it’s also dangerously elitist. By “othering” Appalachia (quite literally, as it has been referred to as “the other America”) we reduce the value of Appalachians as humans in our minds. We make it easier to look the other way when we exploit them for their very lives the way we have been for a century. If we are the ones who do that, then who’s really the Trump-minded among us?

I’m definitely going to reread Hillbilly Elegy and ponder this some more.

---------------CONCLUSIONS---------------

I guess I see it this way. Elizabeth Catte is right: the concept of “Appalachia” and the stereotypes therein (i.e. illiterate, poor hicks) were created by the coal industry and propagated by all of America to soothe our consciences: if they were so poorly off before, then bringing jobs into the area is actually us being nice (even if, you know, some of them die and/or are poisoned along the way). And continuing to buy into that is being complicit with the exploiters, with the “imperialists” as Appalachian author Sharyn McCrumb says in this short but awesome video.

But JD Vance is right, too: Appalachians really ARE undereducated, DO have high poverty rates, DID contribute to (though are not solely responsible for) the 2016 election results.

It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. The stereotype was created to exploit Appalachians, and the exploitation of the Appalachians caused their social problems, which fed into the original stereotype.

What the solution is, I can’t tell you. But though I firmly disagreed with parts of this book, I also really appreciated the opportunity to think more critically about JD Vance’s book, and think about the issues posed in both books more thoroughly.

[Charles White · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good antidote to the half-wittery of J.D. Vance.

[Bruce · Rating 5 out of 5]

I started reading Elizabeth Catte’s book and could not stop. I’ve underlined and written notes all through the text of course. My guess is that a good proportion of my friends saw thorough J. D. Vance’s hideous “Hillbilly Elegy”, but it’s a monster best seller and soon to be Ron Howard movie, so maybe not. Read this. Catte eviscerates Vance (who at one point she likens to the monster in ”It Follows”), along with other prime examples of ignorance masquerading as intellect such as Charles Murray, Harry Caudill, and William Shockley. Though focused on Appalachia (and why it’s a convenient myth for conservatives and liberals alike), Catte gets to universal issues of identity, narrative, self-determination, and the endless tyranny of wealth, privilege, and power.

[Connie G · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Appalachian region has been in the news frequently since the 2016 election, and the publication of J.D. Vance's popular book. Historian Elizabeth Catte gives a fuller picture of who lives in Appalachia and the roots of its problems. In addition to the stereotypical Scots Irish white individuals, many Appalachians are also African American, Native American, and Hispanic. Many Appalachians do not fit the profile of a white, male conservative.

Much of the poverty in the region is due to the history of economic exploitation by the coal industry, although the coal corporations are no longer the significant employer they were in the past. Corporate welfare allowed the coal industry to damage the area environmentally, control politics in the region, and to accumulate enormous tracts of land while paying little corporate property tax. The miners and other citizens carried most of the weight of taxation since the tax for personal property was high. It was difficult for the miners to fight for workers' rights when the coal companies controlled the politicians. Strip mining and mountaintop removal has done significant damage to the region.

Recently, there has been growth in the prison industry where some of the most dangerous offenders have been imprisoned in the Appalachian region. However, most of the higher level jobs have not gone to the local people.

The book tells about Appalachian activists over the years who have campaigned for unions, workers' rights, health clinics, clean water, and other environmental concerns. A reading list in the back is a source of many Appalachian works of nonfiction, fiction, and poetry written by a diverse group of individuals, and many of these works were discussed in the text. Elizabeth Catte, who was born in East Tennessee, gives an insider's view of Appalachia. The book has lots of interesting information, but it could have benefited from better organization and expansion of some topics.

[Rachel Blakeman · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'm not sure what I am getting wrong about Appalachia and I just finished this book. The author didn't seem to know where she wanted to go with this aside from getting it out the door to capitalize on the enthusiasm about "Hillbilly Elegy." It had a very haphazard "structure" that never really answered the question. I think she assumed the reader knew a lot more about Appalachian history than most do. Unfortunately she kept comparing it to a book that was simply a wonderful read, which I never took to be a cultural assessment of a few million people but rather a story that may not be entirely unique. At least it was a quick read.

[Autumn · Rating 4 out of 5]

A must-read. And as someone who's from Appalachia, I really appreciate her analysis of the region and rebuttal against the horrific stereotypes we're plagued with.

[Shomeret · Rating 5 out of 5]

When I came across commentary about Hillbilly Elegy by J. D. Vance, I thought about what I knew of the history of the region and it didn't sit right. So I never did read it. I figured that I wouldn't get any fresh insight from Vance. I read Kephart's Our Southern Highlanders many years ago. So I'm familiar with that perspective. I was glad to come across What You Are Getting Wrong About Appalachia by historian Elizabeth Catte who is also native to the region. I thought I could learn something from Catte's book.

I already knew that Appalachians were portrayed as backwards as an excuse to seize their land. It wasn't just about the destruction of the environment by mining companies. Though that was also a serious issue. It was about taking everything these people had--their homes and the farms that were their livelihood. This is the root cause of Appalachian poverty.

Catte also mentions Black Appalachians in her book. If you read Vance's book you'd think that there were no African Americans in Appalachia.

Elizabeth Catte has an extensive bibliography to bolster her arguments. It was refreshing to see her perspective. She successfully proves that there have been and still are Appalachian radicals, and that the population of Appalachia is more ethnically diverse than Vance portrays.

For my complete review see http://shomeretmasked.blogspot.com/20...

[jrendocrine at least reading is good · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ran into this book in the comments section of GRs (where many interesting things happen) - and the very next day in NYTimes again as a strong recommendation from Beth Macy (who wrote Dopesick) -where she says on BytheBook:

"J.D. Vance’s “Hillbilly Elegy” makes me angry every time I think about it. Vance blamed Appalachians’ woes on a crisis of masculinity and lack of thrift, overlooking the centuries of rapacious behavior on the part of out-of-state coal and pharma companies, and the bought-off politicians who failed to regulate them, and he took his stereotype-filled false narratives to the bank. So, please, please, if you take one thing away from this interview, read Elizabeth Catte’s “What You Are Getting Wrong About Appalachia” instead, and understand that the You in her title is foremost J.D. Vance."

Catte is an historian from Appalachian Tennessee - she's really mad that Vance has reduced people into a single (white) thread and ignored the many valiant fighters for rights in the mines/etc- [reminding me that my grandfather was a union coal miner and frequently on the run]. Yes, the workers' anthem "Which side are you on" was written by Florence Reece, an Appalachian woman protesting as mine Bosses ran roughshod over miners and their families.

Those of us who read Vance a long time ago and felt we were informed - and now watch in horror as he toadies up to Trumpists - Catte's book is the start of an answer. But it's only a first light into the impenetrable - I suppose Catte didn't mean to give us the answers - just to define that Appalachia is a place of many different types of people, struggling against corporate greed. I salute her, along with the many people now writing successfully about corporate destruction since the beginning of time.

The person who needs to read this is Joe Manchin. Oh, and the rest of us too, it's only 140 pages to get the word out and re-orient yourself.

[Linda Layne · Rating 2 out of 5]

I had a very difficult time making it through this book. Obviously by her title, "What You Are Getting Wrong About Appalachia" she has problems with J.D. Vance's "Hillbilly Elegy." No doubt the title was meant to get the reader's attention and sell more books. It did get my attention.

I am of hillbilly stock, to be more precise, my bloodline is from Appalachia mountains, specifically, the mountains of West Virginia. Now to begin with, I read Vance's book before I read Catte's. I happened to prefer his book over hers. Why? Well, perhaps because I did not believe Vance had anything to prove in writing his book. He was writing a MEMOIR, as he states in his title. It appears to me that Ms. Catte's main goal was to disprove everything Vance had to say. Again, let's remember Vance's book title contains the word MEMOIR. So, his book is based on HIS experiences.

Ms. Catte's book is based on HER experiences and HER research. I suppose I might have enjoyed reading her book, if I was not stumbling over her attitude every few pages. She does have many good points, however, the personalities and issues Vance describes in his book DO EXIST. They existed when he was growing up and I am sure they continue to remain.

How would I know this? Well, while I did not grow up in Appalachia, I was jointly raised by people who did. So I was exposed to the close-mindedness, the idea of keeping certain family secrets in the family, no matter how horrible - some things were just not spoken of in the presence of strangers. And yes, you took care of your own against whoever the "enemy" might be. And, yes, I was exposed to racial bigotry. Thankfully, I also had a mother and a grandmother who saw to it that I also heard positive ideas and non-racist comments about people who had different colored skin, were Jewish, and came from other countries (Poland, Italy, etc. i.e., for some, it was not enough being "white" - one could not be "different" in ANY way, what so ever.

So, in conclusion, I am sure Ms. Catte did her research, but her writing style is a little too aggressive when it does not need to be. Her complaint that Vance's, book is everywhere, IN OUR SCHOOLS ("oh, the horror") well, maybe the instructors, just want to start a discussion among their students, and get them talking. Isn't that how change starts?

[Bookworm · Rating 2 out of 5]

I had never read J.D. Vance's 'Hillbilly Elegy' after reading/hearing from other voices stating that it's really not a good representation of his subject(s) and that it's really more about a launching a political office career. So when I saw Catte's response plus a few other articles it seemed like this would be a better representation of the area.

Catte seeks to upend some of the perceptions, stereotypes, common media narratives about the Appalachia. With a mix of history, commentary, and analysis, Catte discusses the Appalachia and its people to show, well, why what is often portrayed isn't always the truth.

It was a disappointment. The ratings were high but comments about needing an editor, any editor are on point. I'm honestly not sure what Catte was trying to do, except perhaps directly reply to Vance. There are plenty of points where it'd be great to expand upon (for example, I would have loved more discussion about the non-white people in the region and what brought them there, how *they* feel about being underrepresented, etc.) in the text but it feels like a mishmash. It felt like I either really needed to be already familiar with the Appalachia (which defeats the purpose of the book) and/or the author simply threw down a bunch of thoughts.

In some ways it felt like Catte simply fell into the same trap: she talks about Trump voters, coal miners, etc. but not about the groups/issues/etc. that are underrepresented in the media or actually helped the reader (who I thought was assumed not to be familiar with the region) get a more in-depth understanding. I'm still not sure what it is that "we" are getting wrong about the Appalachia.

I'm not sure if I'll read Vance's book. It seems Vance's book deserves a response but book really wasn't it nor does it do a good job in helping us understanding what we're getting wrong. There are a couple of interesting bits of information, but even this short book was far too long. Borrow from the library but I wouldn't rush to read it.

[Dennis Fischman · Rating 4 out of 5]

I thought I knew a few things about Appalachia, but in 150 pages, Catte has taught me:

*That sympathy for the region and disgust for it can be two sides of the same coin.

*That any problem you can find in Appalachia, you can find all over America.

*That the image of Appalachia as “Trump Country” not only ignores the radical opposition, it’s part of a century-long effort to paint Appalachia as backward, stuck in time, a country of its own—in short, an ideology that has been used to exploit the people of the region and ignore their own wishes.

*That casting Appalachia as uniformly white and Scots-Irish is wrong, because it ignores the African American, Native American, Jewish, and Latino populations who have long contributed to the region...AND because it makes myths about that ethnic group into explanations of why poverty persists in Appalachia.

On that last point, Catte is particularly strong when she refutes the unduly popular book Hillbilly Elegy. She shows how J.D. Vance’s aspersions on redneck culture give aid and comfort to outright racialist arguments that it’s all in the genes.

At times, especially toward the end of the book, Catte can wax lyrical about the past and present movements of resistance. If you’ve never read about Mother Jones, the NMU, or present-day activism by artists and queers, you might feel lost at moments. The best thing to do would be to make a note of the names and use this book as a launchpad for future reading.

[Katie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Elizabeth Catte’s What You Are Getting Wrong About Appalachia is written as a rebuttal to J.D. Vance’s Hillbilly Elegy, a book I have not read and have no intention of reading. Watching from the cheap seats I’ve seen Elegy get pulled apart as Vance’s inconsistencies and frankly racist sources get exposed. While it is certainly a memoir, it isn’t a reliable history.

Which brings me to my only major detraction when it comes to What You Are Getting Wrong About Appalachia, Catte wrote this riled up in the immediate aftermath of her home territory getting labelled “Trump Country”. Catte refutes Vance and his warped picture of Appalachia (which it should be noted is not a new warped view, it’s the same old same old that was used to get affluent whites to care about poverty in the 1930s and later and edges into eugenics) by bringing in a more well rounded account of modern Appalachia. But that doesn’t prevent her from running over to polemic instead of social history on occasion.

full review: https://faintingviolet.wordpress.com/...

[Tuck · Rating 4 out of 5]

Author highlights the blacks liberals Latinos progressives of this mountain region and how tree and coal and people exploitation has shaped the culture and economy. And how many many people are fighting to change that pattern.

[Kyra Leseberg (Roots & Reads) · Rating 3 out of 5]

I feel like I need to preface this review by saying I'm not into discussing or reading politics.  Anyone who spends enough time on social media knows the insanity of watching people argue their beliefs online.  It's a waste of time and energy.

I didn't bother reading Hillbilly Elegy by J.D. Vance because what I heard from friends who read it was that he was taking all the stereotypes of Appalachia and telling you how true they are.   No, thank you.

I picked up What You Are Getting Wrong About Appalachia because a friend recommended it.  She was quick to say this wasn't a political book bashing either political party but rather a look at the history of Appalachia and how the government (and other groups) have created and used the stereotypes of Appalachia for their own gain.

Elizabeth Catte was born and raised in Appalachia, just like J.D. Vance.  This book was essentially her response to Hillbilly Elegy:

"Vance is a well-educated person of means with a powerful platform who has chosen to accept a considerable amount of fame and wealth to become the spokesperson for a region. Since he is such an enormous fan of personal responsibility, I am thrilled to hold him responsible for his asinine beliefs and associations. Appalachian blogger Kelli Haywood, in her essays on Elegy, objects to the individuals who claim that Vance isn't authentically Appalachian because he migrated outside the region. I don't give a damn about geography, but I'll note that Vance has transcended one of the most authentically Appalachian experiences of them all:  watching someone with tired ideas about race and culture get famous by selling cheap stereotypes about the region."

After the media recently deemed Appalachia "Trump Country", every stereotype for the region has been paraded around, fascinating the rest of the country.

Catte lays out a brief history of the area - the culture and the stereotypes - and how it has played a role in politics and big business over time.  I really enjoyed her discussion about what has been created by the region rather than for the region and the books and art she mentions throughout.  This was a well written piece that cautions readers about what the media is feeding the masses about Appalachian people and culture and why.

If you want some history and insight into Appalachia and some perspective on using the region for political reasons, What You Are Getting Wrong About Appalachia is a quick and interesting read.

For more reviews, visit www.rootsandreads.wordpress.com

[Melissa · Rating 5 out of 5]

JD Vance’s Book, Hillbilly Elegy, infuriated me. Vance claimed to explain Appalachia to the world, but he completely ignored the historical context that created the poverty of Appalachia. Instead he blamed that poverty on the failings of culturally inferior individuals, completely ignoring the impact of an unholy alliance of exploitive corporations engaged in resource extraction (and now the prison industrial complex) and corrupt local politicians who conspired to use the law and law enforcement to create and maintain structures of inequality. Vance ignored evidence of generations of resistance to these forces, instead presenting the people of Appalachia as dependent and lacking in ambition. Historian Elizabeth Catte’s book is a beautifully written, carefully researched corrective to all that. It is Catte who should be appearing on the Sunday morning news shows and Catte’s book that should required reading in college classrooms, not Vance’s book which promulgates persistent, inaccurate, and destructive culture of poverty stereotypes. Of course, Catte’s book is complex and multi-layered and it doesn’t lend itself to the superficial analysis and self-congratulatory rhetoric that the media—on the left and the right—flock to embrace. If you really want to understand Appalachia, throw Hillbilly Elegy away and read this book.

[Angie · Rating 1 out of 5]

It's hard to tell whether or not Elizabeth Catte made any valid points in her rebuttal of J.D. Vance's "Hillbilly Elegy" due to her fragmented writing style and overly academic verbiage. Vance's book was an easy, interesting read written in a vastly more appealing format. Whereas "Elegy" was fluidly written and compelled me to devour its content, trying to muddle through Catte's disgruntled and fragmented diatribe was like mining for nuggets of coal (dark, difficult, and exhausting). The author has such an obvious chip on her shoulder, which I found off-putting. I just couldn't finish this one, even though I tried REALLY hard.

[Matthew Noe · Rating 5 out of 5]

A vital rebuke of Vance, but more than that, a strong foundational history of the region that leaves you ready for more. Which, kindly enough, Catte provides plenty of suggestions on where to go next.

[Luke · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5/5

If Appalachians could be tamed and put to industrial purpose, these theories suggested, then they might be spared the bloodshed, vice, and moral degeneracy natural to their primitive existence. This was music to the ears of developers, who justified economic expansion by contending that modern employment would bring order and harmony to the mountains and save mountaineers from their own worst impulses in the process.

I recently served a patron who checked out a hardcover of Kobabe's Gender Queer in one hand and an audiobook of J.D. Vance's HE in the other, and if you expect me to be similarly neutral about presenting one of the most challenged books in the US alongside one of the most fatuously mainstream, go fuck yourself. It did make me glad that I had recently started supplementing my personal collection diet with public libraries again, as while the best time to pick up this particular book would have been right after publication, six years later in the aftermath of a certain VP pick and right before Banned Books Week certainly has to rank up there. For while some folks are concerned about 'balance', I'm a professional, and what I need is not the definition of 'terrorism' changing depending on who's getting the biggest aid packages from my government, but a window into why a former coworker of mine would feel not just comfortable with labeling the land encompassing hundreds of millions of fellow citizens as a death trap, but just, practically noble even.

Curiously, the mountaineers identified by both Rothstein and the authors of Hollow Folk as the most degenerate lived in the area of the Shenandoah Valley closest to the developed areas of the future national park, where wealthy businessmen hoped to accelerate evictions to begin the expansion and new construction of vacation resorts.

What I found were field mines of my own biases, acres of good historical fact, and an entire world that looked a lot like what I had experienced/engaged with (imperialism as social paradigm) but had its own intersectional complexities to consider (you can't have land back as a settler, no matter how many times you've been targeted by eugenics or corporate magnates). The union work was especially gnarly, and as I look into the likely future of filing a grievance against my city of work for conflating market adjustment with cost of living, I think of how human sacrifice was legalized back in the day and of the worth in making sure the individual understands what's going on so that they can carry it to the friend to the family to the locals to the world and how much the sort of elitism that piggybacks on Appalachian stereotypes would interfere with that effort.

The store owners, incidentally, did provide provisions to striking miners, especially those with children. And for their generosity the commonwealth rewarded them with charges of "criminal syndicalism[".]

All in all, much as the dehumanization of unhoused folks stamps down on workers' rights, casting entire portions of the country into the fire as irredeemable (thinking of Florida, thinking of the South) shoves orientations towards equity off-kilter everywhere (thinking of California going petty fascist with every caving to the NIMBYS and the 'parents rights' mewlers), and if Trump gets elected, it's going to be because my 40-years-Silicon-Valley-resident mother voted for him a third time, not what some hillbilly six states away chooses to do with their gun. I'm the opposite of well-traveled, so I can't say I would ever make it over to Appalachia unless I went out of my way to attend a librarian conference (which wouldn't be the most outlandish thing to be honest). However, Catte took me there in every way I needed and then some, so while I may mess with that five stars to satisfy my own re-calibrations, it won't be any time soon.

For white people uncomfortable with images of the civil rights struggles and the realities of Black life those images depicted, an endless stream of sensationalized white poverty offered them an escape—a window into a more recognizable world of suffering.

[Sue · Rating 2 out of 5]

Overall, this book was a thorough disappointment.

The author explicitly states this book is a refutation and response to J.D. Vance's Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis. This is stated in her forward as well as repeatedly through the book.

When I picked up this book, I was excited. A book duel! I expected to see either 1) a recitation of points made by Vance followed by Catte's counterpoints or 2) Catte's own direct unique experiences offering a counter point to Vance's work.

Instead I got door number 3: incoherent ranting. Catte refutes exactly nothing that Vance puts forward in his book. In fact, Vance's book is a deeply personal memoir - how exactly would you go about refuting someone's life? Instead, Catte digs up a number of people who are conservative (as Vance openly is conservative) and attacks the views of those people.

All of those people have one overriding thing in common: None of them are the author of the book she claims to be refuting. She offers us a classic logical fallacy of the Straw Man: "creating the illusion of refuting or defeating an opponent's proposition through the covert replacement of it with a different proposition and the subsequent refutation of that false argument." (Per Wikipedia's definition of Straw Man.)

Her sources to refute the views of the people who didn't write the book in question? Huffington Post, New York Times, National Review, and similar publications. All valid publications, but since none purport to be any sort of experts on Appalachia they are utterly pointless in context of her stated goal of refuting Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis.

I could summarize her position as this. J.D. Vance is a conservative, Elizabeth Catte dislikes conservative views, so J.D. Vance needs to be silenced. I'm personally sick of this faux approach to intellectual discourse.

I will say the second half of the book is much better. She leaves off her straw man attacks and presents a well-thought out history of the exploitation of coal mining, the unintended consequences of the War on Poverty for Appalachia, the current soul-deadening of commercial prisons as a growth industry in the region. I suspect the second half of the book was in progress, and she added the first half as an emotional overreaction to J.D. Vance.

I wish I had read the second half of the book only. I hope the author considers re-issuing a book with just the second half. The first half is a full on temper tantrum, poorly written and poorly edited, and should never have made it to publication.

I gave the book 2 stars - the average of 4 stars for the second half and 0 stars for the first half.

[Stephanie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read Hillbilly Elegy back when it came out, long before I had to worry about J.D. Vance representing me in Federal government -_- And, you know what? It's a compelling story. It's the kind of bootstrapping the American Dream is predicated upon.

But the issue I had with it then, and the issue I have with it now, and the issue (at least one of...) I have with Vance now being my U.S. Senator is that J.D. Vance takes his personal perspective and experiences, generalizes it to an entire culture, and then considers himself some sort of self-appointed representative of an entire people just by being born to a certain region. That's some big White Male Energy right there. He also does a good job of ignoring handholds and external factors like social safety nets that helped propel him to success, but that's a whole other conversation.

Enter What You're Getting Wrong About Appalachia written by Elizabeth Catte, a historian native to and specializing in Appalachia, who objectively has a better understanding of the region and its people than one man whose authority rests solely on growing up there, and she has a bone to pick with Vance.

What You're Getting Wrong About Appalachia was written as a rebuttal to Vance's narrow yet broadly generalized take of Hillbilly Elegy and she too takes issue with Vance's self-appointed spokesperson status, and more broadly, it's a rebuttal to everyone who thinks they know who and what Appalachia is through the stereotypes by which they've been introduced.

I really enjoyed this book overall, but what I especially appreciated is that Catte not only shares history and complex realities of Appalachia and its people, she also discusses who is served through the typical monolithic and stereotypical representation that is the dominate narrative of Appalachia.

[Blaire Malkin · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you are one of the many people who read hillbilly elegy please take the time to read this too. It is the antidote to the anger I felt reading the Vance book. She picks apart Vance and the stereotypes that he traffics in. She exposes his political agenda and why so many people were taken in by him. She tells the story of labor movements, environmentalists, and community organizers. She shows Appalachia is not all white people and breaks down the myths of Appalachian homogeneous cultural background and addresses how this has been taken up by different conservative groups over time. An important book that I wish people read instead of hillbilly elegy.

[Amy · Rating 3 out of 5]

This one is framed as a response to Hillbilly Elegy and I think this book does a fantastic job of that. There were a number of problematic things in Hillbilly Elegy and this book does a good job of calling those out and addressing them. However, this book felt much more academic in nature and, as a result, I didn't connect with it as easy as I did to Hillbilly Elegy. I did learn a lot but I don't think this is quite as reader-friendly as it could be which did impact my enjoyment of the book. If the topic interests you, give it a try but it is very academic in nature.

[Austin Gilbert · Rating 5 out of 5]

This blew me right outta the Ohio River. This was a fantastic pushback against stereotypes and poverty porn and complacency and the Scoundrel JD Vance. I felt pride, I felt outrage, and I felt solidarity. This is a Strong Recommend.

[stephanie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Everyone, please read this book.

[Bonnie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Forget Hillybilly Elegy. This is the book you need to read.