Back Talk from Appalachia: Confronting Stereotypes

363 Pages·2000·22.56 MB·English

by  Dwight B. Billings

8ackTaik
from
Appalachia

Back Talk
from
Appalachia
~
Confronting Stereotypes
Edited by
Dwight B. Billings
Gurney Norman
and Katherine Ledford
Foreword by
Ronald DEller
THE UNIVERSITY PREss OF KENTuCKY
Publication of this volume was made possible in part
by grants from the E.O. Robinson Mountain Fund
and the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Copyright © 1999 by The University Press of Kentucky
Scholarly publisher for the Commonwealth,
serving Bellarmine University, Berea College, Centre College of Kentucky,
Eastern Kentucky University, The Filson Historical Society, Georgetown College,
Kentucky Historical Society, Kentucky State University, Morehead State University,
Murray State University, Northern Kentucky University, Transylvania University,
University of Kentucky, University of Louisville, and Western Kentucky University.
All rights reserved.
Editorial and Sales Offices: The University Press of Kentucky
663 South Limestone Street, Lexington, Kentucky 40508-4008
www.kentuckypress.com
14 13 12 11 10 4 5 6 7 8
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Confronting Appalachian stereotypes
Back talk from Appalachia: confronting stereotypes I Dwight B. Billings, Gurney Nor
man, and Katherine Ledford, editors; foreword by Ronald D. Eller.
p. cm.
Originally published: Confronting Appalachian Stereotypes.
Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1999.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN-lO: 0-8131-9001-0 (paper: alk. paper)
1. Mountain whites (Southern States)-Appalachian Region, Southern
Ethnic identity. 2. Mountain whites (Southern States)-Appalachian Region, South
ern-Social conditions. 3. Stereotype (Psychology)-United States. 4. Appalachian
Region, Southern-Social conditions. 5. Mountain whites (Southern States) in literature.
I. Billings, Dwight B., 1948- II. Norman, Gurney, 1937-
III. Ledford, Katherine. N. Title.
F210 .C66 2001
975~009734--dc21 00-044923
ISBN-13: 978-0-8131-9001-3
This book is printed on acid-free recycled paper meeting
the requirements of the American National Standard
for Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials.
Manufactured in the United States of America.
I
~.~.' ~ Member of the Association of
'I~ - American University Presses
Contents
Foreword ix
Ronald DEller
Acknowledgments xii
I. (Re)lntroducing Appalachia: Talking Back to Stereotypes
Introduction 3
Dwight B. Billings
Beyond Isolation and Homogeneity: Diversity and the History of
Appalachia 21
Ronald L. Lewis
II. Speaking of "Hillbillies": Literary Sources of Contemporary Stereotypes
A Landscape and a People Set Apart: Narratives of Exploration and
Travel in Early Appalachia 47
Katherine Ledford
"Deadened Color and Colder Horror": Rebecca Harding Davis and
the Myth of Unionist Appalachia 67
Kenneth W. Noe
The Racial "Innocence" of Appalachia: William Faulkner and the
Mountain South 85
John C. Inscoe
A Judicious Combination of Incident and Psychology: John Fox Jr.
and the Southern Mountaineer Motif 98
Darlene Wilson
vi ~ Contents
Where "Bloodshed Is a Pastime": Mountain Feuds and Appalachian
Stereotyping 119
Kathleen M. Blee and Dwight B. Billings
Where Did Hillbillies Come From? Tracing Sources of the Comic
Hillbilly Fool in Literature 138
Sandra L. Ballard
III. Speaking More Personally: Responses to Appalachian Stereotypes
The "R"Word: What's So Funny (and Not So Funny) about
Redneck Jokes 153
Anne Shelby
Appalachian Images: A Personal History 161
Denise Giardina
Up in the Country 174
Fred Hobson
On Being "Country": One Affrilachian Woman's Return
Home 184
Crystal E. Wilkinson
Appalachian Stepchild 187
Stephen L. Fisher
If There's One Thing You Can Tell Them, It's that You're
Free 191
Eula Hall
IV. Sometimes Actions Speak Louder than Words: Activism in Appalachia
The Grass Roots Speak Back 203
Stephen L. Fisher
Miners Talk Back: Labor Activism in Southeastern Kentucky
in 1922 215
Alan Banks
Coalfield Women Making History 228
Sally Ward Maggard
Contents ~ Vll
Paving the Way: Urban Organizations and the Image of
Appalachians 251
Phillip]. Obermiller
Stories of AIDS in Appalachia 267
Mary K. Anglin
V. Recycling Old Stereotypes: Critical Responses to The Kentucky Cycle
America Needs Hillbillies: The Case of The Kentucky
Cycle 283
Finlay Donesky
The View from the Castle: Reflections on the Kentucky Cycle
Phenomenon 300
Rodger Cunningham
Regional Consciousness and Political Imagination: The Appalachian
Connection in an Anxious Nation 313
Herbert Reid
Notes on The Kentucky Cycle 327
Gurney Norman
Contributors 333
Index 336

Foreword
Appalachia may likely have replaced the benighted South as the nation's most
maligned region. Once disparaged as the "bunghole" of the nation, "the Sahara
of the Bozarts:'! the South has risen in stature in recent years, and the new
"Sunbelt South" now rivals other regions as the symbol of American economic
and cultural progress. Not so Appalachia. Always part of the mythical South,
Appalachia continues to languish backstage in the American drama, still dressed,
in the popular mind at least, in the garments of backwardness, violence, pov
erty, and hopelessness once associated with the South as a whole. No other
region of the United States today plays the role of the "other America" quite so
persistently as Appalachia. When my family left West Virginia to migrate to
Ohio for a period in the 1950s, most white Southerners were labeled hillbillies;
hillbillies in the 1990s are not just Southerners, they are Appalachians.
Perhaps that is why Robert Schenkkan set his 1992 Pulitzer Prize-winning
play in eastern Kentucky. An epic tragedy about violence and greed, The Ken
tucky Cycle seeks to recast the American myth as a story of repeated failure and
poverty, the failure of the American spirit and the poverty of the American
soul. No other region quite symbolizes this countervailing image ofA merica as
does Appalachia. With its stereotypical feuds, moonshine stills, mine wars, en
vironmental destruction, joblessness, and human depredation, Appalachia was
the place where the American dream had failed, and that idea for Mr. Schenkkan
made it "quintessentially American."
Appalachian scholars have long recognized the role that the "idea of Appa
lachia" has played as counterpoint to the idea of America. As Americans have
sought to redefine themselves as a people, Appalachia has become a Janus-faced
"other:' Throughout much of the nineteenth century Appalachia represented a
geographic barrier on the frontier, "a strange land inhabited by a peculiar
people"- a people who were at once quaint and romantic and yet a burden to
American success. By 1900 a popular image of Appalachia had crystallized that