As Senator JD Vance has been named Donald Trump’s vice presidential candidate, commentators are turning to Vance’s 2016 memoir: “Hillbilly Elegy” to elucidate America’s political moment.
Eight years ago, Vance was a “Never-Trumper” and compared Trumpism to “Cultural heroinein an opinion piece for The Atlantic. Nevertheless, Vance's book about growing up in a troubled southwest Ohio town became a regular work in explaining the Trump turn in American politics. A reviewer even compared Vance to an Appalachian Ta-Nehisi Coatesand divulges white working-class America to outsiders in the identical way that Coates' writings explained black America to white readers.
Today, with Vance on the Republican presidential ballot, national attention is once more focused on Middletown, Ohio. His hometown – just north of Cincinnati – is at risk of becoming an abstract symbol of America's Rust Belt. Ironically, it's easy to lose sight of the town's wealthy, distinctive heritage that gave Vance's memoir its power.
As a native Brit Religious and immigration scholarI stumbled upon the study of Appalachia. Twenty years ago, I couldn't even tell the difference between a banjo and a mandolin and would have struggled to call a single bluegrass song. Dubious depictions similar to the horror film “When dying, everyone seems to be the primary“ shaped my impression of the customs and traditions of the Appalachians.
Before I moved from Scotland to southwest Ohio, I couldn't have imagined teaching Appalachian history, literature and geography in classrooms full of the grandchildren of Eastern Kentucky coal miners. But my students at Miami University's regional campuses have taught me as much as I actually have taught them—especially in Middletown, where I read “Hillbilly Elegy” in my Introduction to Appalachia class in 2018.
City on the crossroads
Strictly speaking, southwest Ohio will not be a part of the Appalachian Mountains. The southeast of the state, which borders West Virginia, is taken into account the foothills of this mountain region. The southwest, alternatively, which borders Kentucky, is clearly a part of the Midwest but is strongly influenced by the Appalachian heritage.
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As within the Appalachians, diverse landscapes and mass migration have shaped this a part of the state. In the mid-Twentieth century, economic upheaval—most notably the mechanization of coal mining—driven Vance’s grandparents and plenty of hundreds of other Appalachian