Register of the Kentucky Historical Society

Elizabeth Catte's What You Are Getting Wrong about Appalachia is a "must-read" book for those interested in Kentucky or Appalachia and also for those seeking an antidote to the anti-intellectualism that drives political thinking in the U.S. today. Catte's interlocutor is J. D. Vance's best-selling Hillbilly Elegy (2016), a "memoir" that overgeneralizes from personal experience and repeats tired stereotypes of Appalachia as entirely Scots-Irish (white), monolithic, and stuck in the past. His conclusion is that no government can solve the problems of Appalachia and the Rust Belt because they are largely cultural and self-inflected. His explanation fits with the victim-blaming, political rhetoric of our times, which may explain why it became a best-seller and will be the subject of a Ron Howard film.

That a wealthy hedge fund manager who was raised in Dayton, Ohio, resided in California, and had never done research in the region could become the spokesperson for Appalachia galled scholars of the region. We wrote reviews, op-ed pieces, protested the selection of this book as required reading, included this topic in our courses, and clogged our list serves with heated discussion. The columns of Elizabeth Catte, native Appalachian and public historian, however, caught the attention of Belt Publishing who saw that there was not just a market but also a need for someone to respond to Vance's book. What You Are Getting Wrong about Appalachia is the result of that effort.

Grounded in decades of Appalachian Studies scholarship, this book is a necessary corrective to the myths and stereotypes that Vance's work reinforces. Catte begins by demonstrating how Appalachia has been framed since the late nineteenth century as a static, monolithic, mono-cultural place that history has forgotten. She demonstrates that these depictions are untrue at the same time that they serve political purposes. The creation of these fictional "hillbilly" caricatures have been used throughout U.S. history to legitimize eugenics, anti-immigrant [End Page 97] attitudes, and white supremacy by providing a plausible defense against charges of racism and xenophobia. After all, how can you call them racist when they want to sterilize "white" hillbillies, too? "Using Appalachians to fill made-to-order constituencies, anchored by race is a tired game," Catte complains (p. 13). "Social upheaval, from the Civil War to the civil rights movement, often triggered, and still does, a larger fascination with Appalachia. These projections do a disservice to both Appalachians and other economically and socially disadvantaged groups by pitting their concerns against one another instead of connecting them" (p. 13).

Catte's exploration of the Appalachia that Vance ignores and silences is divided into three parts: "Appalachia and the Making of Trump Country;" "Hillbilly Elegy and the Racial Baggage of J. D. Vance's 'Greater Appalachia;'" and "Land, Justice, People." The book ends with a list of suggested resources that provide a more complete and inclusive depiction of political subjectivity and action in Appalachia than offered by Vance and much of mainstream media.

Part I, on the making of Trump Country, starts with the January 2006 Sago mine disaster, which claimed the lives of twelve miners. Catte traces economic, structural, and narrative causes and continuities between those events, the Presidential campaign of 2016, and back to the Hatfield-McCoy "feud," and miners' unionization efforts of the early twentieth century. She points out that Appalachia is no more "Trump country" than the rest of the nation, but the habit of using Appalachia as a scapegoat for American problems has a long history indeed. Part II examines the racial politics of falsely portraying Appalachia as "Scots-Irish" and the role this myth plays in U.S. political ideology and practice. Vance's racialized political discourse, in this section, is linked to its roots in documentary film, photography, the eugenics movement, the War on Poverty, and relocation and development projects such as the Tennessee Valley Authority and the National Parks in Appalachia...