According to Elizabeth Catte, what is it that people keep getting wrong about Appalachia? Specifically, what might Catte find objectionable in Vance’s book?
Week 2 Day 2 Discussion Question 3
February 18, 2019 | 3 Comments
Class, Culture, Representation
February 20, 2019 at 1:50 pm
According to Elizabeth Catte, a writer born and raised in Appalachia, what people are getting wrong about Appalachia is evident in the title of her article: “Passive, poor and white? What people keep getting wrong about Appalachia”. Catte points out that there is only a negative connotation attached to people of Appalachia, and how words and images of “whiteness”, “poverty”, and “political self-harm” are the first to reach the public’s eyes and ears when talking about the people of this region. What people are ignoring and failing to look deeper into is the happiness and pride the citizens of Appalachia have. Catte comments that “If I had the power, I would break that image search and fill it with photograph s of youth and joy and if you hasked me how that could possibly represent our reality I’d remind you that thousands of images of passive , poor white people don’t do a very good job of that either”. Her point here is that she is not trying to completely delegitimize the negative aspects seen in the media, but also supplement the media with other stories of activism and joy that are evident as well.
Catte will find some things objectionable in Vance’s book , Hilbilly Elegy, in which he tells his story as someone coming from Appalachia who became an image of the “American Dream” and “upward mobility”. He tells story of his Ohio community using words such as “pessimists”, “lack of agency”, and “society/government-blaming” to describe some people, seemingly blaming the societal values he thinks they hold as the cause. He believes it was his optimism and the support of his family that allowed him to move up and eventually end up at Yale Law School. In this way, Vance is pretty critical of his neighbors and blames the “hillbilly culture” as a reason for their inability to move up the ladder. While he does point out some positive attributes, such as loyalty and love for their country, he is remarkably critical of his hometown. While Catte is not trying to prove that some of these things – such as poverty and whiteness are evident in Appalachia, she is trying to explain that themes of liveliness, desire, and advocacy can coexist with these things as well.
February 20, 2019 at 1:08 am
Catte largely objects to the media sensationalizing Appalachia as a homogenous group of people who are “white, deprived, and spiritless.” I am from the Shenandoah Valley where Catte currently lives and I understand her objection that this portrayal of people does not represent everyone. In particular, Augusta County, Catte’s home, has a greater proportion of African-Americans that the United States as a whole. However, in my experience, the area remains highly segregated.
While a agree with Catte that it is imprecise to paint a region with too large of a brush, Vance’s book is not inaccurate. The resentment of the government still exists from people who were pushed off of their land to create the Shenandoah National Park. Although they were resettled out of the mountains and provided amenities such as running water and electricity, their identity of being self-sufficient was taken away. I see this as the “lack of agency” that Vance mentions. I do find some of Vance’s generalizations of decline problematic. He often equates addiction with moral failing and ignores the medical underpinnings of the disorder. He is quick to characterize others as lazy for failing to pull themselves up by their bootstraps as he did.
Although Vance does not speak for all of Appalachia, he gives voice to a distinct culture that exists. His observation of social isolation is not to be discounted by Catte countering that other groups of people also inhabit the space. This cultural distance can be seen when Catte mentions uses the word “activism” in a positive way. In rural Augusta County, the word carries with it connotations of an elite, liberal, godless, out of touch, big government loving hippie who looks down on hard working people and believes that they are bigoted and ignorant.
February 19, 2019 at 9:23 am
An interesting contradiction manifests in the writing of J.D. Vance and the writing of Elizabeth Catte. “Hillbilly Ellegy” presents an honest analysis of the inhabitants of Appalachia, and more specifically, Vance chronicles the degradation of his hometown, Middletown, Ohio. While this story is somewhat loving and reminiscent of his childhood, J.D. Vance is largely pointing out flaws in his impoverished white community and makes it clear that there were more issues than just economic insecurity, but there were also issues with the culture of the “hillbilly” itself. He recounts that his education was lax, that there was not a lot of drive to succeed, and as a result, that there was a large population of nonworking white population. They lacked aspirations to get out and to see the rest of the country, but people simply did not know to look outside of this region. He points out, “Alongside these conflicting norms about the value of blue-collar work existed a massive ignorance about how to achieve white collar work. We didn’t know that all across the country– and even in our hometown– other kids had already started a competition to get ahead in life.” (58) Additionally, he speaks about the lack of desire to pursue education, “No one in our families had gone to college; older friends and siblings were perfectly content to stay in Middletown, regardless of their career prospects.” Being unemployed and ambivalent about education was the standard.
Catte’s analysis of Appalachia emerges as effort to reframe the narrative of this region, to shed light on its positive attributes. It’s clear that there is a new fascination with this part of the country as a result of out most recent election. She writes passionately about the misrepresentation of Appalachia through journalism and the media, and that these images fail to, “tell the story of the region’s activism and advocacy.” She instead seeks to demonstrate that art, journalism, and media created by Appalachians is a far more accurate representation of reality than the representations of Appalachia from outsiders. Additionally, she emphasizes a difference in the attitude toward “contentment,” that J.D Vance also writes about. At the end of the article, she states, “But above all, I am attracted to images of contentment and freedom, an emotion not often captured by strangers with their cameras who prefer us posed in dilapidated bars and traders or staring dejectedly at the remnants of out discarded industry.” This is the exact scene that Vance describes, and he also describes the “contentment” as an entity that hinders the members of this region, rather than a characteristic that strengthens a community. She firmly concludes, “If I had the power, I would break that image search and fill it with photographs of joy and youth.”