75 reviews for:

Appalachian Reckoning: A Region Responds to Hillbilly Elegy

Anthony Harkins, Meredith McCarroll

3.96 AVERAGE

ingridm's review against another edition

4.0

informative reflective medium-paced

rins0lia's review against another edition

4.0

challenging informative reflective slow-paced

e_austin's review against another edition

4.5

challenging hopeful informative sad medium-paced

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This is a wonderfully complex and thoughtful compilation. I learned a great deal about Appalachia and the wide variety of people which call it home, and feel inspired to try to connect more genuinely with some of my generational roots which run back there. 
In my opinion this book, with its multitude of voices, presents a much more engaging, developed, and moving picture of Appalachia than Hillbilly Elegy does. 

dont_stop_meow's review against another edition

2.0

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Aside from the personal narratives, I found this to be a pretentious, puffed-up attempt to attack JD Vance. Dude's entitled to his own story, his own personal narrative.

melloftheball's review against another edition

4.0

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A really valuable read to gain another perspective on Appalachia after reading Hillbilly Elegy. Much of the writing is more academic than Hillbilly Elegy, but it provides a much more well rounded look at the region and the people who live there. I definitely recommend this as a follow-up to Hillbilly Elegy.

bethbarron's review against another edition

4.0

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This was recommended to me after reading Hillbilly Elegy earlier this year. (It's also on the @bittersoutherner summer reading list.)
I found these essays and poems challenging, enlightening, heartbreaking, and encouraging. We all have a story to tell and each story has many perspectives. As a Southerner, I'm well acquainted with misrepresentation of our culture(s) and way(s) of life. It's imperative we listen to more than just one story and consciously choose to eliminate generalizations. The various cultures and legacies that mark each region, each road, in the United States are beautiful even in their darkest parts.

hansonkali's review against another edition

5.0

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This is definitely a must read for anyone who has read Hillbilly Elegey. Especially if the person who read it didn't like it as most of the essays here don't agree with JD and what he wrote. Which to be fair is why I bought the book and read it myself and I really have no regrets. This book was amazing.

qqjj's review against another edition

4.0

challenging informative inspiring

dustytea's review against another edition

3.0

medium-paced

eculatta's review against another edition

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This looks so good!

Available through PINES - need to place hold.

https://wvupressonline.com/node/774#2

Contents

Acknowledgments
Introduction: Why This Book? | Anthony Harkins and Meredith McCarroll

Part I. Considering Hillbilly Elegy

Interrogating

Hillbilly Elitism
T. R. C. Hutton

Social Capital
Jeff Mann

Once Upon a Time in “Trumpalachia”: Hillbilly Elegy, Personal Choice, and the Blame Game
Dwight B. Billings

Stereotypes on the Syllabus: Exploring Hillbilly Elegy’s Use as an Instructional Text at Colleges and Universities
Elizabeth Catte

Benham, Kentucky, Coalminer / Wise County, Virginia, Landscape
Theresa Burriss

Panning for Gold: A Reflection of Life from Appalachia
Ricardo Nazario y Colón

Will the Real Hillbilly Please Stand Up? Urban Appalachian Migration and Culture Seen through the Lens of Hillbilly Elegy
Roger Guy

What Hillbilly Elegy Reveals about Race in Twenty-First-Century America
Lisa R. Pruitt

Prisons Are Not Innovation
Lou Murrey

Down and Out in Middletown and Jackson: Drugs, Dependency, and Decline in J. D. Vance’s Capitalist Realism
Travis Linnemann and Corina Medley

Responding

Keep Your “Elegy”: The Appalachia I Know Is Very Much Alive
Ivy Brashear

HE Said/SHE Said
Crystal Good

The Hillbilly Miracle and the Fall
Michael E. Maloney

Elegies
Dana Wildsmith

In Defense of J. D. Vance
Kelli Hansel Haywood

It’s Crazy Around Here, I Don’t Know What to Do about It, and I’m Just a Kid
Allen Johnson

“Falling in Love,” Balsam Bald, the Blue Ridge Parkway, 1982
Danielle Dulken

Black Hillbillies Have No Time for Elegies
William H. Turner

Part II. Beyond Hillbilly Elegy

Nothing Familiar
Jesse Graves

History
Jesse Graves

Tether and Plow
Jesse Graves

On and On: Appalachian Accent and Academic Power
Meredith McCarroll

Olivia’s Ninth Birthday Party
Rebecca Kiger

Kentucky, Coming and Going
Kirstin L. Squint

Resistance, or Our Most Worthy Habits
Richard Hague

Notes on a Mountain Man
Jeremy B. Jones

These Stories Sustain Me: The Wyrd-ness of My Appalachia
Edward Karshner

Watch Children
Luke Travis

The Mower—1933
Robert Morgan

Consolidate and Salvage
Chelsea Jack

How Appalachian I Am
Robert Gipe

Aunt Rita along the King Coal Highway, Mingo County, West Virginia
Roger May

Holler
Keith S. Wilson

Loving to Fool with Things
Rachel Wise

Antebellum Cookbook
Kelly Norman Ellis

How to Make Cornbread, or Thoughts on Being an Appalachian from Pennsylvania Who Calls Virginia Home but Now Lives in Georgia
Jim Minick

Tonglen for My Mother
Linda Parsons

Olivia at the Intersection
Meg Wilson

Appalachian Apophenia, or The Psychogeography of Home
Jodie Childers

Canary Dirge
Dale Marie Prenatt

Poet, Priest, and “Poor White Trash”
Elizabeth Hadaway

List of Contributors
Sources and Permissions
Index