Hutchins Library News Blog

In response to Hillbilly Elegy

by Amanda Peach on 2016-09-02T16:54:02-04:00 | 0 Comments

You only have three days left to check out the book display, "In response to Hillbilly Elegy", that is currently installed near the cafe area on the library's main floor.

The idea for the display grew from an email written by our Sound Archivist, Harry Rice, who had this to say about the controversial title:

J.D. Vance’s recent Hillbilly Elegy has received much negative and positive treatment by the popular press / media (liberal and conservative) and the Appalachian studies community. There is much interest in both what he says and doesn’t say about people in Appalachia. Might a book, media, image, archival collection display ... that portrays contrasting points of view be a good way for the Library to start off the semester?

We couldn't have agreed more, and so currently on display is an array of titles reflecting many different definitions of what it means to be Appalachian, including Hillbilly Elegy itself.

A Reading List in Response to Hillbilly Elegy

Studying Appalachian Studies by Chad Berry (Editor); Philip J. Obermiller (Editor); Shaunna L. Scott (Editor)

Call Number: 974 S933 2015 c. 2

Publication Date: 2015

In this collection, contributors reflect on scholarly, artistic, activist, educational, and practical endeavor known as Appalachian Studies. Following an introduction to the field, the writers discuss how Appalachian Studies illustrates the ways interdisciplinary studies emerge, organize, and institutionalize themselves, and how they engage with intellectual, political, and economic forces both locally and around the world. Essayists argue for Appalachian Studies' integration with kindred fields like African American studies, women's studies, and Southern studies, and they urge those involved in the field to globalize the perspective of Appalachian Studies; to commit to continued applied, participatory action, and community-based research; to embrace more fully the field's capacity for bringing about social justice; to advocate for a more accurate understanding of Appalachia and its peop≤ and to understand and overcome the obstacles interdisciplinary studies face in the social and institutional construction of knowledge.

Hillbilly by Anthony Harkins

Call Number: 975.009 H282h Copy 2

Publication Date: 2005

In this pioneering work of cultural history, historian Anthony Harkins argues that the hillbilly-in his various guises of "briar hopper," "brush ape," "ridge runner," and "white trash"-has been viewed by mainstream Americans simultaneously as a violent degenerate who threatens the modern order and as a keeper of traditional values of family, home, and physical production, and thus symbolic of a nostalgic past free of the problems of contemporary life. "Hillbilly" signifies both rugged individualism and stubborn backwardness, strong family and kin networks but also inbreeding and bloody feuds. Spanning film, literature, and the entire expanse of American popular culture, from D. W. Griffith to hillbilly music to the Internet, Harkins illustrates how the image of the hillbilly has consistently served as both a marker of social derision and regional pride. He traces the corresponding changes in representations of the hillbilly from late-nineteenth century America, through the great Depression, the mass migrations of Southern Appalachians in the 1940s and 1950s, the War on Poverty in the mid 1960s, and to the present day. Harkins also argues that images of hillbillies have played a critical role in the construction of whiteness and modernity in twentieth century America.

Feud by Altina L. Waller

Call Number: 975.4404 W198f Copy 3

Publication Date: 1988

The Hatfield-McCoy feud, the entertaining subject of comic strips, popular songs, movies, and television, has long been a part of American folklore and legend. Ironically, the extraordinary endurance of the myth that has grown up around the Hatfields and McCoys has obscured the consideration of the feud as a serious historical event. In this study, Altina Waller tells the real story of the Hatfields and McCoys and the Tug Valley of West Virginia and Kentucky, placing the feud in the context of community and regional change in the era of industrialization. Waller argues that the legendary feud was not an outgrowth of an inherently violent mountain culture but rather one manifestation of a contest for social and economic control between local people and outside industrial capitalists -- the Hatfields were defending community autonomy while the McCoys were allied with the forces of industrial capitalism.

Southern Migrants, Northern Exiles by Chad Berry
Call Number: 304.809 B534so Copy 1
Publication Date: 2000
One of the largest internal migrations in U.S. history, the great white migration left its mark on virtually every family in every southern upland and flatland town. In this extraordinary record of ordinary lives, dozens of white southern migrants describe their experiences in the northern "wilderness" and their irradicable attachments to family and community in the South. Southern out-migration drew millions of southern workers to the steel mills, automobile factories, and even agricultural fields and orchards of Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, and Illinois. Through vivid oral histories, Chad Berry explores the conflict between migrants' economic success and their "spiritual exile" in the North. He documents the tension between factory owners who welcomed cheap, naive southern laborers and local "native" workers who greeted migrants with suspicion and hostility. He examines the phenomenon of "shuttle migration," in which migrants came north to work during the winter and returned home to plant spring crops on their southern farms. He also explores the impact of southern traditions--especially the southern evangelical church and "hillbilly" music--brought north by migrants.Berry argues that in spite of being scorned by midwesterners for violence, fecundity, intoxication, laziness, and squalor, the vast majority of southern whites who moved to the Midwest found the economic prosperity they were seeking. By allowing southern migrants to assess their own experiences and tell their own stories, Southern Migrants, Northern Exiles refutes persistent stereotypes about migrants' clannishness, life-style, work ethic, and success in the North.

A History of Appalachia by Richard B. Drake

Call Number: 975 D762h Copy 3

Publication Date: 2000

For more than 20 years historians have expressed the critical need for a single-volume history of Appalachia in Virginia. Responding to this demand, the author of this text has woven together the various strands of the Appalachian experience into a sweeping whole.

Appalachia in the Making by Mary Beth Pudup (Editor); Dwight B. Billings (Editor); Altina L. Waller (Editor)

Call Number: 975 A64545 Copy 3

Publication Date: 1995

Appalachia first entered the American consciousness as a distinct region in the decades following the Civil War. The place and its people have long been seen as backwards and 'other' because of their perceived geographical, social, and economic isolation. These essays, by fourteen eminent historians and social scientists, illuminate important dimensions of early social life in diverse sections of the Appalachian mountains. The contributors seek to place the study of Appalachia within the context of comparative regional studies of the United States, maintaining that processes and patterns thought to make the region exceptional were not necessarily unique to the mountain South.

Mountain Families in Transition by Harry K. Schwarzweller; J. J. Mangalam; James Brown

Call Number: 301.32 S411m

Publication Date: 1991

A result of almost three decades of research, this is a highly readable account of the people and families of an isolated mountain locality in eastern Kentucky as they struggled to adapt to the increasingly dismal economic and social conditions of Appalachia. Focusing with rare insight and compassion upon the families which finally moved from their subsistence-farming localities, this study details how they made the move and how they fared in the large industrial centers to the north. Mountain Families in Transition is a model study of the many ramifications, the intricacies, and the problems involved in the urban relocation of a mountain people long isolated from the mainstream of American society. In many ways this classic in the literature of sociology parallels accounts of the immigrant groups in America at the turn of the century.

Power and Powerlessness by John Gaventa

Call Number: 320.975 G282p Copy 4

Publication Date: 1980

Appalachia on Our Mind by Henry D. Shapiro

Call Number: 301.2975 S529a

Publication Date: 1978

Appalachia on Our Mind is not a history of Appalachia. It is rather a history of the American idea of Appalachia. The author argues that the emergence of this idea has little to do with the realities of mountain life but was the result of a need to reconcile the "otherness" of Appalachia, as described by local-color writers, tourists, and home missionaries, with assumptions about the nature of America and American civilization. Between 1870 and 1900, it became clear that the existence of the "strange land and peculiar people" of the southern mountains challenged dominant notions about the basic homogeneity of the American people and the progress of the United States toward achieving a uniform national civilization. In his skillful examination of the "invention" of the idea of Appalachia and its impact on American thought and action during the early twentieth century, Mr. Shapiro analyzes the following: the "discovery" of Appalachia as a field for fiction by the local-color writers and as a field for benevolent work by the home missionaries of the northern Protestant churches; the emergence of the "problem" of Appalachia and attempts to solve it through explanation and social action; the articulation of a regionalist definition of Appalachia and the establishment of institutions that reinforced that definition; the impact of that rationalistic definition of Appalachia on the conduct of systematic benevolence, especially in the context of the debate over child-labor restriction and the transformation of philanthropy into community work; and the attempt to discover the bases for an indigenous mountain culture in handicrafts, folk song, and folk dance.

Appalachian Images in Folk and Popular Culture by W. K. McNeil;

Call Number: 975 A6457 1995 Copy 1
Publication Date: 1989

A compilation of articles and essays from the past 130 years on the character and spirit of Appalachian culture, organized according to four major periods in the awareness of Appalachian culture. Essays covering Kentucky feuds, moonshining, handcrafts, dietary habits, and religion include introductions and editorial commentary.

Appalachia by Phillip J. Obermiller; Mike E. Maloney
Call Number: 975 A6465 2007
Publication Date: 2006

Useful for students, human service workers, educators, researchers, librarians, reporters, administrators, and policy makers, this book contains essays that offer a different perspective on Appalachia. It also contains sophisticated theoretical analyses of the region and of similar places worldwide that have emerged from that public discourse.

Hillbilly Elegy by J. D. Vance
Call Number: 305.562 V222h 2016
Publication Date: 2016
From a former marine and Yale Law School graduate, a powerful account of growing up in a poor Rust Belt town that offers a broader, probing look at the struggles of America’s white working class Hillbilly Elegy is a passionate and personal analysis of a culture in crisis—that of white working-class Americans. The decline of this group, a demographic of our country that has been slowly disintegrating over forty years, has been reported on with growing frequency and alarm, but has never before been written about as searingly from the inside. J. D. Vance tells the true story of what a social, regional, and class decline feels like when you were born with it hung around your neck. The Vance family story begins hopefully in postwar America. J. D.’s grandparents were “dirt poor and in love,” and moved north from Kentucky’s Appalachia region to Ohio in the hopes of escaping the dreadful poverty around them. They raised a middle-class family, and eventually their grandchild (the author) would graduate from Yale Law School, a conventional marker of their success in achieving generational upward mobility. But as the family saga of Hillbilly Elegy plays out, we learn that this is only the short, superficial version. Vance’s grandparents, aunt, uncle, sister, and, most of all, his mother, struggled profoundly with the demands of their new middle-class life, and were never able to fully escape the legacy of abuse, alcoholism, poverty, and trauma so characteristic of their part of America.

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In response to Hillbilly Elegy

You only have three days left to check out the book display, "In response to Hillbilly Elegy", that is currently installed near the cafe area on the library's main floor.

The idea for the display grew from an email written by our Sound Archivist, Harry Rice, who had this to say about the controversial title:

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Hutchins Library News Blog

In response to Hillbilly Elegy

You only have three days left to check out the book display, "In response to Hillbilly Elegy", that is currently installed near the cafe area on the library's main floor.

The idea for the display grew from an email written by our Sound Archivist, Harry Rice, who had this to say about the controversial title:

0 Comments.

Search this Blog

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This post is closed for further discussion.