A review by moonyreadsbystarlight
What You Are Getting Wrong About Appalachia by Elizabeth Catte

informative tense

5.0

This book includes history of Appalachia and the history of how Appalachia has been misrepresented. While it is short, it holds an incredible amount of information. If you have read, seen, or even considered <i>Hillbilly Elegy</i>, you need to read this. Appalachia goes far beyond the white conservative population that is incorrectly painted as the majority. This goes into the profoundly racist history of journalism featuring Appalachia and Vance's narrative and personal relationship to it. There is also discussion of the rich leftist revolutionary action that has come out of Appalachia in the face of abuse and terror from coal companies (history that I never learned even a little bit about in school, despite being a stone's throw away from South Central Appalachia). Not only does a lot of the common narrative about Appalachia wholly misrepresent what has happened, but it is deeply rooted in white supremacist and eugenicist ideologies. 
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