Everybody has to move. Thank you for coming out. Im ginger, part of the event team. If you will do me a favor and check your cell phones and make sure they are turned to vibrate. We do 300 events around town each year. If you are not on our mailing list you can set up for our mailing list at the front. We send 3 or 4 emails a month. Tonight we welcome four contributors to the anthology appalachian reckoning. Anthony harkins, meredith mccarroll, bob hutton and ivy brashear. This is a diverse, complex and the management of response to hillbilly elegy a memoir of family and culture in crisis. I will turn the floor over to them. Anthony harkins is professor of history, the author of hillbilly, a cultural history of an american icon. Meredith mccarroll is director of writing and rhetoric, the author of race and film. T. R. C. Hutton teaches american studies at the university of tennessee and is the author of it is i will say this wrong. Blood he blessed. Politics and violence published to the university of kentucky. Ivy brashear is apposition translator for Community Economic development in maria, kentucky. Welcome tonight. Thank you for coming. I will turn the floor over to you. Thanks for helping to organize this and thanks to parnassus for holding this. Can you hear all right . I want to thank West Virginia university press, the publisher of this book, this weird thing that we might do. Abby has been amazing at getting this book out there. Tony and i are going to talk about the process. We decided to have two contributors from the collection, there is a little bit going on in nashville right now. The structure tonight is a lot like the structure of this book. We will hear from tony about the concept of the book, why we wrote this book and then we will hear from bob hutton on interrogating hillbilly section of the book. And grounded in his work as a historian. Iv will read from her peace, the appalachia i know is very much alive which is drawn from the responding section of the book and a powerful personal response to hillbilly elegy a memoir of family and culture in crisis. The final section of the book is called beyond hillbilly elegy a memoir of family and culture in crisis, a collection of different voices that are not speaking directly to j. D. Vance. I will read from my piece, on academic power. From there we hope the conversation will open up and you will join us in thinking about it. You want to talk about it . I thought taylor swift was going to be here. It is not on her itinerary. Thank you all for coming, we appreciate it. The book it came as an idea from the press because i lead a panel at the Appalachian Studies conference a couple years ago on hillbilly elegy a memoir of family and culture in crisis and the reactions to it. You all know about its phenomenal book sales. There are a lot of concerns about the book. It is not just a response directly to hillbilly elegy a memoir of family and culture in crisis but a response beyond to think about what it is to be appalachian and other ways to think about the appalachian experience and move beyond the limited experience of what the appalachian experience is. I just thought i would read the questions that we are seeking answers for. What about j. D. Vance in his book account for the explosion of interest in this historical moment of National Political turmoil. Bobble speak to this as well, that book hillbilly elegy a memoir of family and culture in crisis would not be what it was without the trump phenomenon in the trump election. Other pieces in the book talk about trump appalachia, it is defined as a single sort of voting block that is important to mercy. Why have the ideas caused such a firestorm in the region . What can we learn about actual appalachia and the weight is perceived . As a student of the image, i think about what purpose these representations serve in politics and why is it, when i wrote my original book hillbilly 25 years ago i thought this image cannot continue to last. It has just been every other image of that timeframe, native stereo typical image has continued in the culture and yet hillbilly just keeps coming and coming and coming. What purpose is it serving the culture . What does it mean in the 21st century to be appalachian and most significantly, one of our contributors asks in his poem social capital what other appalachian voices have been drowned out in the attention this book has garnered. Three of us are academics and ivy brashear is a lapsed academic now doing actual work, community development. We have a lot of contributors who are not academics, who are poets, photography. We have personal narratives, we thought it was important to have multiple perspectives speaking not just from the perspective of scholarship and they are lapsing back and forth between peoples experiences and the work that they do. The book is designed to address all those different issues from a number of different visions and ultimately make the case no single book, no single voice can speak for a place as broad and diverse as appalachia. Go ahead, ivy brashear. I am good to go wherever. I am from Eastern Kentucky, and for five generations we have lived in central appalachia for ten generations. I have been told to be proud of where we come from and who we are, to be proud of cornbread and sauerkraut, to be proud of playing in the creek in the summertime making but pies with my cousin and all that. When i got older and into the world and saw the narratives, but people who live there i was angry, most of the stories told about the region are false or at the very least lacking in some way so my response was about that, pushing back on who gets to tell the story of this place because it matters. It matters who tells the story, it matters what those stories are because those stories help to construct what the place is. This guy here, is it accurate, lacking in distinct ways. How do we combat that . We tell our own stories. Thats what i tried to do in my essay and i would like to read a little bit of it. Beginning, middle and end, into this space and try to bring her in when i can so i will start with her and a little bit of her story. She had had enough. She back along the road in front of her house, lifts the virginia slim in her mouth, pulled it from her purse, determined. The trip and been running day and night, in front of her house every day for weeks. They were toting every bit of furniture in an outside her home with a thick layer, her kitchen counter, the rocking chair she sat in when watching the price is right in the morning and wheel of fortune in the evening. The porch swings, the hanging ferns that encircled her porch, nothing could escape the intrusive dust kicked up from the road by the trip as they bailed backandforth to the mine, the dust squirreled in sick clouds seeping in under the front door and closed windows. It buried everything no matter the efforts to keep the tides that may hold the tsunamis were inescapable. Theres only so many times a womans windex can clean up after someone elses miss before the time comes to act. Give me 3 hot meals a day and a place to sleep, she proclaimed to my dad, to remove her 1woman barricade. She wasnt making a political stand, she was more interested in defending her home from unclean intrusions. He didnt make the truck stop forever but did turn around and go home that infamous day and she couldnt take it any longer. A small victory for a woman who fought for everything she had. Fierce is a good word, fiercely loyal to her children and grandchildren. She threatened to coach at the local hospital, give her son a letterman jacket, fierce advocate for doing unto others as you would have them do unto you. She kept most of the hungry children in saint customer kentucky fed their entire childhood. Fierce mountain woman with big dreams of city life playing piano and singing in chicago or new york city but married a man her mother picked for her before she graduated high school. She stayed with him until the end of her life because of the fierce sense of duty. To me she was granny, a fierce storyteller had the most enormous zest for love and life with hard to match. The last thing to echo on the walls and reverberate off the hills, music was her one true love second only to the fierce, expensive love she had for her family. Made up songs about everyday life, rolled up her lips as easily as the values, she would often catch the words someone spoke to her and trail off into a song containing the word. The sunshine is bright today, she would answer in melody, in the paths, in the paths where the sun never shines, she always wore pink lipstick and white powder and clip on earrings, she had arthritis in her toes from a youth spend in high heels with matching dresses, she was a beautiful woman. Once she took her firstborn to have their portraits made and her photographer was so struck by her beauty she insisted on taking her portrait too. She is wearing pearls in that photo. She maintained a standing hair appointment every friday, always had short hair which she preferred even for her only daughter, my mom preferred what her parents wanted. She got her drivers license and earned her ged when she was in her 40s, kept a newspaper clipping in a drawer, her and her fellow ged recipients, she lived the life of confinement in some ways always meeting others expectations inside minor own dreams in the process. Her middleage was about reclaiming independence, creating life outside her husband and children. She was and remains one of the fiercest, strongest women i have ever known. We lived up the hill from her and i knew her door was open to me. I could run down the hill and into her house without warning any day and she would welcome me in welcoming me with food and conversation. She put up peaches and bags for winter, i watered her 11 hanging ferns, she played piano every sunday, the Family Church founded by my great grandfather a mile from my home. She told me i had piano fingers. I felt so special like she had chosen me to carry on her music. Sometimes mom and i would visit in the evening, watch wheel of fortune coming in the summer her porch would be filled with families who lived with a mile radius, great aunts, cousins, uncles and neighbors, lots of updates to family stories late into the evening. She was outspoken. Once telling a man to get a life and get a job and another time telling longtime preachers he was wrong about god not giving people talent they didnt have to learn. Everyone knew where they stood with her and where she stood on certain issues. Mostly everyone knew you didnt cross her and praised her and followed her lead. I would never ever in my wildest dreams or imaginings disrespect her in any format because of her fairness by calling her a lunatic as j. D. Vance referred to his mama in his memoir hillbilly elegy a memoir of family and culture in crisis was the way he describes this woman he claims to revere and credit as the reason he made it out of his low income life in suburban ohio and Yale Law School is shameful. He sells out his family members by tapping into long history, distorted and intentionally made stereotypical images of central appalachia that have been imposed on my region by outside media makers for 300 years. After the prospectors were spent and the region by George Washington himself. His history of misleading images of the place and people who live there proves his end game, monetary gain and National Notoriety to bolster a potential political run for office supported of course by his carefully created and curated self image as a socalled expert on the white workingclass of appalachia. Place for which he has never lived. His only connection to the realities were visits with grandparents who traveled home for short periods for a few summers when vance was a child. Vance also actively diminishes, glosses over, and ignores the reality of the Critical Role that appalachia women play. And have played in the economy and in shaping the regions culture and understanding of itself. Appalachia in fact, is a very matriarchal culture. We revere our grandmothers and mothers. We follow their lead as they enter the workforce because their husbands have been laidoff. For generations theyd have grown and harvested food and fed our bellies three times a day. They have stood on picket lines when men were banned from doing so. They have chained themselves to bulldozers and refused to leave their homes. They prop up economy in the way that is largely ignored and made invisible and unimportant and false narratives. In reality the work and Country Visions of women, people of color comic where folks across the region are vital to its past, present, and future survival. In short, hillbilly elegy present and, appalachia and whih my experiences and those of my family and those of many of the people i know and love in the region did not exist. It erases my story. A young appalachian with roots ten generations deep in kentucky whose ancestors settled five generations ago. I hold within meet the fierce loyalty and determination of my grandma, the unconditional compassion, the individuality of my parents and the mountain heart and soul, the private dignity of all my ancestors combined. And the truth is, we are an incredibly Diverse People in efficacy, race, class, beliefs and thoughts come just like any other place in america. We are the descendents of native people, slaves, subsistent farmers, coal miners, homemakers, schoolteachers, sharecroppers, business owners, eastern europeans and africans. I rapidly increasing number of us have come from mexico or south america. We are gay, straight and everything in between. We are democrats and republicans. And more than anything, most of us dont vote at all because of apathy and disenfranchisement. Some of us are coal miners but more of his work in healthcare. Some of us live in abject poverty, a few of us live in extreme wealth and most of us live in the middle trying desperately monthtomonth to make it all worked. In these ways we are very similar to anyny other world ple in america right now, just try to figure out our place in a 21st century world that has for the most part left us to fend for ourselves. Whether j. D. Vance or anybody else in big medias orbit wants to admit it, those of us who are from or currently live in the region are all appalachians and we allll have a story to tell about the place we love, the place where our bones are from, the place j. D. Could only dream about truly knowing. My granny had enough that day. Although she didnt end up in jail and never faced punitive action for taking tuesday, she took matters into her own hands because as the dissent of generations of people, who have to do for themselves just to survive, she knew thats the way of appalachian people. Perhaps rather than the false narratives about our dna being encoded with laziness and poverty, the true makeup of our genes is intense selfreliance. We always hadse everything taken from us and weve always had other people telling us and everyone else who we are. So weve had to make do with what we already had for decades. As a result we become experts at cleaning up other peoples messes. We have cleaned up the messes and in my mental disasters left by extracting extraction compae artificial messes corporations try to make between us, and among races. Weve worked to clean up the mess big media have made us into. And long after we cleaned up what j. D. Vance has done, we will go on living in this place making stories here and telling them to anyone who will listen. Maybe someday our complex stories will overpower the simpler, false narratives about our place. Until then we will be waiting to clean up any new messes while simultaneously building our brighter future, despite the narratives telling us we cant do it and that we are not worth it. We simply t no better. More than anything, weve had enough of those lies. Thank you. [applause] [applause] well, i first heard about this book in the summer of 2016 im sure thats the case with a lot of people here. Not because i have a spot at the bookstore, well, im from southern appalachia and i teach history at a university that sometimes acknowledges it isnt appalachian sometimes it doesnt. And i teach that history. When the book started circulating the summer of 2016 that had the word hillbilly in it, a bunch of people had asked me if i had read this book. For the first half of this some more nothing except every one asking about of these see if you things on the internet, finally sometime in august someone send me a copy and asked me to it review it. In a moment im going to read a portion of that the strangest thing is what happened next. My mom asked me if she could borrow the copy i said of course in prevention with the review few months passed and i found out tony wanted to do a panel, he wanted a cop and asked for back for my mom. She said id donate it to a library us and why did you do that . She said you didnt like it. [laughter] i told her in academia sometimes we have to keep the books we dont like. So my very heavily marked up copy is in the Public Library and blacktop mountain and virginia very close to the Presbyterian Church were my mom preaches. So i will dedicate this reading to her and her congregation. I hope someone, whether they enjoyed the book i hope someone is actually reading that copy because i will never see it again. [laughter] also before what to start reading a went to mention my reaction i think was somewhat different when i did get around to reading it in august of 2016 i think it was obvious even though im from appalachia, reading it i didnt really seat much of appalachia in it. Instead of region, my first couple thoughts were more about economics so this is a little bit of what my reaction was i also want to mention thanks who allow this to be reproduced and appalachian reckoning was very nice of them. So anyway, hillbilly elegy is basically a work of what i would call self congratulations. [laughter] a literary victory lap in a vindication of the minimalist safety. Wasnt surprised someone like david brooks manure times with such a fan. Condescension over grew the love and what he called the crazy hillbillies phrase that comes up quite often in the book. His book ultimately illustrates the oxymoron, the capitalism and its defenders require. That is, any hardworking individual could rise to the top, but it any given time, far more individuals must remain on the bottom. This is a narrative for which many if not most of the american reading public has shown affection. The bipartisan popularity in 2016 that time when bipartisanship is in short supply the gist of the american reading public still wants to hear about and appalachia and by extension aye working class that is uniform tractable and easy to understand. The public advertise the complexity today is perhaps lower than usual weather social. The fact is Silicon Valley millionaire is the most popular source for understanding 21st century rural poverty is nothing more than a product of the marketplace. Up against the politics of extremist, we are now seeing control by the government, i mustve updated it at some point. [laughter] when i wrote the original i wasnt in control yet. But the politics of extremism we now see controls of the federal government softspoken simplicities like vances are going to seem all the more attractive to the otherwise well meaning americans. Especially folks who by this book. Unfortunately, the politics of hatred is the only apparent alternative, Many Americans will turn instead to the politics of soft intention. Hillbilly elegy is misnamed. Elegies are points dedicated to the dead. The american hillbilly, assuming we can use that word to the white working class, isnt dead. She is just pours shes not going to fade away like they expected the native americans would, like everyone living under capitalism, she is defined by her ability to do work. And in this specific case, her apparent inability to make said work turn a livable profit. And even when there is work, it is becoming less work attempting to do because the value of surplus labor has gone down precipitously over the last four decades. That does not seem to be vances concern. He seems to be giving his people a mostly gently worded lecture on their lack of willingness to work. Even when it appears almost pointless to work. For that reason, the book should have been titled hillbilly reprimand. [laughter] vance does not want to mourn his hillbilly family, he wants to make things control it. Like they allegedly were back in the 20th century. But until workers in the postindustrial economy are shown sufficient cause for work, this is not likely to happen. As long as this is the case, this will continue to be americas favorite native scapegoat. Thank you all. [applause] arent, so the piece im going to read from is the back half of the book which is a collection of a lot of peoples voices. This was originally published by southern cultures. Its called on and owned appalachian accent and power. Lets go around the room and say what we are from. It was my first day in a class called experiencing appalachia during my first year of college. Just outside of charlotte, the professor continually nodded as a circle made its way to me. Haywood county i said. Eyebrows were raised in respects. My home was only about 100 miles to the classroom in which i was sitting but Haywood County suddenly became more than a place to me. It was a marker of identity. On day one of class, i learned that the region foundries have been constantly contested. I was told that migratory patterns explain some of the dialects of the mountains. And i came understand that i was appalachian. I knew that i was a mountain girl. My family had been in Haywood County for generations in one branch of my family tree started or stopped depending upon your perspective when the cherokee were marched through. But i had to take a class called experiencing appalachia even though i was appalachian. To experience the region, we studied the foxfire magazine that lined the bookshelves in my childhood living room. We practice churning butter, we read about quilting. And some of this resignation with me because it was familiar. My granny painstakingly taught me had a quote one time which meant i watch her pull out all of my handwork. My granny grew in canned tomatoes and green beans. I knew the differences between blue lakes and there no sound more satisfying than the pop of lid ceiling on the kitchen counter late afternoons. There plenty of traditions i did not know. And theres nothing markedly that we did because we had to. It is true that i had eaten groundhog on a camping trip and shes like her daddy and needs amount to center eyes against. Yet while i was proud of my home i was also learning powerful startups about appalachia had arrived in places like boston will be for me and had influenced the way even the most considerate people thought about me. The banjo from deliverance had many introductory conversation instead of calling people up for their ignorance i distance myself from haley county. I laughed along, waited longer and longer before saying where i was from. I blended in. During this time i applied to graduate school. During visits to prestigious universities in boston i actively tried to talk right, to be correct, to hide my accent. So i learned to always use adverbs. I took my groceries from a buggy and put them and they cart. I nearly stopped calling my hat at the bargain. I got into graduate school. I got a phd. I learned to pass what i lost my voice. It was my grannies chiding in my ear, youre talking uppity now that you live in boston. I developed a new way of speaking and it wasnt until a decade later that my own repressed voice echoed back to me in West Virginia. Spoke at a Conference Addressing the theme of new appalachia urging his audience to bring double rights issues for lgbtq people into our classrooms, our scholarships and conversations. In order to make appalachia a safer place your new appalachia was tied to the old appalachian activist. As soon as he began speaking i begin to understand the new in light of the old. Combined with the quiet intricate thoughtfulness, his manner speaking awakened in me memories that i had long put to rest. In one moment his voice cracked as he was overcome with emotion remembering the violence and acted upon youth in appalachia. He paused and then said quietly, and it will go on and on and on until we, the teachers, writers and students in the room to make a change. To an outside might sound like he was saying own over and over, but when i heard him repeat this word in this context, i felt the ground shifted beneath me because while he talked about justice, i heard the timbre of my call. As he read his own poetry, i heard the cadence of my aunt betsy. As he addressed his audience i heard my mom talking. I heard established scholars speak in accents and it did not change the content of what they were saying. It did not change the power of intellect. Then i stood up to deliver my representation and appalachian film, and my bowels stood up straight, my aunt was not my own. And i felt a powerful loss of my voice and my accent. Television shows, movies and cartoons rely lazily on the assumption that he was so signify southern accent with a lack of intelligence. It is still acceptable and popular discourse to mock rednecks and hillbillies, reality shows exotic fight appalachia as as a state for se to show how the other half lives without much interrogation of authenticity. People say to lighten up. Its just a movie, just a tv show, doesnt matter. But it does. It matter to me as i left him thinking that the only way to be a legitimate scholar was to attend college in new england and change my voice. I had learned to talk right that id gotten it all wrong. I cant change the fact that my grannies graded granny was raised as as a white girl aften biological parent had to leave her on betrayal of tears, passing for white she had no choice but to assimilate to her surroundings to fito in. Im unable to trace my way back to the culture that was taken from her and connect to a pastor was not allowed to happen. But i but i can claim the past e known. Now that ive learned to articulate issues about representation and genderte politics, i want to do so in my own voice, to let my bowels relax into the shape they wanted to take all along. I t want to honor the voices tht with the soundtracks of my upbringing and respond to the calls of oco joe, granny, and lena, at betsy, i want to draw thick that purse paraded preferred like to pass. I want to clean the voices belonged to my people. Granny mostly made quilts with recognizablele order, but her mother in law made crazy quilts, piecing together scraps and favorites, remnants and setasides. Combined, these polkadots, solids formed something alluring to me beyond any pattern. I loved these crazy quilts and as i struggled my way to my first stitching i thought perhaps that style would be easier than a the log cabin qut i had settled upon. Knowing this wasnt the case, granny took one of the quilts den and with a few words taught me how to judge it. Flipping it over, she revealed the even measured hand stitching that held the mismatched pieces together. I saw how a thing is made whole, how the intricate gathering together of the unlikely makes sense. T im reminded of it now when i consider the seemingly disparate layers of my own voice and identity. Multi generational appalachians come First Generation College graduate, economically privileged, antiracist, mother, writer, teacher. Im reminded of that quilt when i look around and see the multiple ways to be appalachian and to speak appalachian. Perhaps with some attention the voices of the past will not be lost. They can find a way to go on and on and on. Thank you. [applause] so lets open it up to questions o and comments. Complete ignorance. Where does the term hillbilly come from . How much time have you got . I never really knew the answer. I think its multiple, multiple origins and it never quite defined. Some people said they comes from scotland, scotch irish origins. I frankly think it has more to do with the just alliteration, and it seemed funny and so you have the first time, when i was doing the book the first time it appeared in print i found was 1900. So its actually not that old. Recently i think someone found a book that was like 1870 or something that used it. I think its just people from the hills. I think its a simple as that. I do discuss in my book, think of ways about these terms and what didnt. Theres a recent book, called white trash which i think takes it beyond hillbilly. Hillbilly is sort of a safe space in which you can make a derogatory or you can make it funny. I think because you can make it funny its therefore acceptable to roll out all kinds of negative stereotypes, and oh, they are just hillbillies. Certainly j. D. Vance makes no attempt to define or to think about its critical power. He uses that word 50 50 times in the book without any sort of interpretation. So i think, i dont think it has a single origin, just like redneck doesnt have a single origin. Theres different definitions of how that comes about that it definitely has a political purpose which i guess is what explains how it continues to exist and perpetuate, be defined by each new generation. Thanks. First of all i was lucky enough to be in blacksburg so i seen all of you. But im a political organizer in kentucky, tennessee, West Virginia, and im helping to create these new Green New Deal town halls to talk about the appalachian renaissance and if im at the renaissance. I would love thoughts on how, unfortunate appalachia is, it is seen in the light of federal politics, what you see moving into 2020. I would love to hear thoughts about federal issues and policies were seeing now and playing out w in 2020. You know, i think, so first of all, the economic downturn thats happening right now, the collapse of really started 50, 60 5 years ago when the coal mines became mechanized and then stripmining happened and service by happened, mountaintop removal. You know, its a finite resource, so you take a top off a mountain come you take all the coal, its gone. I think people, because this downturn was so sharp and so precipitous, i think that people feelel like this is a new thing, and was sort of like scrambling to figure out. And in some ways we are, but in a lot of ways we really have been trying to build a new economy in this place for 50 years. There have been organizations, one that is 50 years old this year, my organization based is 43 years old. Weve been working on these things are a long time to try to figure out new economy, just transition, what do we do next when the coal is gone. The reason that our ideas and ideas of others who live in the region in the places youre talking about and in other places havent really taken off is because of politics. Its because of policy. Its because of power. The people who hold all the power dont want to let it go. We couldve done a whole lot 50 years ago, couldve done a whole lot 30 years ago when were talking about creating a fund that would put some of this, the taxes on coal, coal that was mine in the fun. That wasnt done. So i think moving into 2020, i think people in the region are kind of exhausted. You know, they are exhausted. I know the people that i work with, people that you are working with, ian know for sure hell exhausted or they feel exhausted theres a narrative that they had to combat. They feel exhausted about politics, exhausted up being called trump alachua and that not being understood. Theres no nuance in the conversation about politics in the region. Its very nuanced and collocated and complex. So i dont know. I dont have an about going into 2020 but i think theres a a rl hunger and theres a real desire to figure it out. To figure out what were going to do. I dont know that people put a lot of stock into politics. We come from a region in Eastern Kentucky where people get power and keep it in to they die. Thats still pretty much true. So i think people dont really put ain lot of stock into that d that being an avenue for them to make change. People do. They still do that work. You were doing that work with people there think it is an important strategy. I think more than that though people are just like try to figure it out, tried to do for themselves and figure out what we do. What we are seeing in the work i do, you meant of economic people are really calling on the pass, calling on what weve always been and what cant be exported what cant be done somewhere else and taken from us in that way. So were really looking inward is what i am seeing. I think that people dont really, people dont really care about federalal politics reallyn the whole because they just dont see thatg impacting their lives in any way. And i will say, i think trump happened because a lot of people didnt vote. Right now we are and can take in chino in the midst of a governors race the reason we ended up with matt bevin is because people didnt vote. He got 30 of the vote. He won by 16 . 16 . Thats what he won by. People are that apathetic about it. I mean come people are kind to think about politics, but more than that their time to think about how they can do it themselves. Thank you. Theres often questioned about 2020 and these bigger issues and sometimes i feel a little silly or a a little limd in the fact the work i do is around storytelling. But i wonder, iv, if you see, i do want to such up in this way. Im ready. Of you like what is happening, there was a screening for the film hillbilly. I dont know if you have you seen that, it just came out recently, a documentary that looked at representation of hillbillies in film and war and also intersect with the 2016 president ial election. Theres a question afterwards about why there is this, often this can a a question about wht are people voted against president trump. I dont think people ever vote against their best interest actually but if you like there is really a powerful story telling thats happening on behalf of the coal industry that they are not just doing a job of extracting coal. They are working in these stories and wondering if you, do you think that is true . Do you see that happening and is there anyway this story to think can be revised . Thats absolutely true, absolutely. I wrote my masters thesis about representation specific tote reality tv but in that Research Found that wind pahpa. Found out there was wealth to be extracted, they started telling the stories. This has been a long task of this has been a 300 year history in telling these stories and integrating the people in the place that made it okay to take everything they had, take everything from them. More recently, the war on coal narrative that happened when obama was elected in 2008, that has been pretty detrimental in recent past because the stories they were telling was, this is a war on coal. You have to fight for your place to get the fight or you are, for your way of life. People in Eastern Kentucky, West Virginia, coal mining is cultural. Its not just a job. It is who somebody is. They see themselves as this thing. They are a coal miner through and through, generations and generations have been coal miners. The coal industry knows this and they were really really, really did a good job of turning this narrative, which at one point was very anticoal owner, coal miners, they were on the picket lines. They were striking. They went to war against the coal industry to fight for the rights and tofi fight for better wages and if i cannot have to pay Company Money in company stories. What they really played on was brotherhood of cold miners to say okay, these people are attacking you, attacking your of life, attacking your culture, who you are and your brothers who stand next to you underground and work hard every day to provide for your families here they really did a good job of twisting that narrative and its been hard to fight against it. Really, really hard. Jade events has notin made any easier. One of the reasons people are so exhausted because these narratives are out there and theyre really controlling what we able to do is Economic Developers and Community Builders because its so hard to say to people no, no, no, thats not the story when thats all they are hearing in the National Media and on the National Stage and from people they think are credible sources. Hard and the work i do is all about narrative shifting and how they take those that are inaccurate and false and incomplete and complicated them and twist them in the way of him just trying to rebuild the economy. I dont have an answer. I wish i did. I wish i was able to just flip a switch and see okay but i havent figured it out yet. Im working on it and lots of other people are working on it. We are trying constantly. [inaudible] an upside to the downside. The sorry to put you on the spot. Its very connected to organizing in the region that comes from coal mining and those that organized the. That was the color of the movement because of his being colored of [inaudible] which geologically and geographically is the same. But certainly not much to till the land. You could just keep coding and im curious your perspective on that. There is the mapping in terms of geology, sure the mountains go all the way up there that i think ive been trying to get my head around this why it is so different and it gets slippery because i dont want to see okay on this side of the line come on the outside of the line you are not like this because then it depends upon it being the same and it isnt the same. The region is one of several different maps and it includes 13 states. West virginia is the only state that has every county and goes from the bottom tip of new york down into alabama. And those two states are incredibly different. I grew up in Western North carolina and a nice old cold i was driving back to the Association Conference invites all end over and went to look at it. I am not of the coal Mining Industry and there are so many different kinds of subcultures exhibit gets tricky to try to map it and say what it is and it isnt. I do think though that there is something about the extracted industry that has the way the companies have come into place to take the timber and cold i think it is a combination of that and the unavailable land that there is a shared experience there. I dont see that same sort of extraction. I guess it does move up there. It becomes the target of the extracted industry is a because so much of the Great Northern but it had already been cut down before we considered them machine age. We talked about this being more morality and regions is that fair . I think that you have raised a very excellent point because the people in academia and the southern appalachia in the studies by 90 i think that is part of a it and part of it is t overlaps the northern difference in the south and that also becomes an extra layer of. I think all of those elements together define it as this. The civil war is key. Its almost immediately after the civil war we start seeing of the population of things from its surroundings and they start looking at the places in kentucky and North Carolina. Than they are telling those in philadelphia is a [inaudible] he had some of the same issues going on that was basically red fax and dysfunctional people in maine but that doesnt have been a second and the kind of stream of representation. Dani pletka debate [inaudible] but now you have these. I think at the same time as she felt like she had been judged and this was hopeful context because maybe she was from rural connecticut. But i think that she probably isnt going to say where shes from and have people. This is where i think of this representation. It gets completely exemplified into one where people think of as a voting bloc when its incredibly complex. There was a cartoon about the origin and a story in the cartoon where shes in North Carolina and shes angry and walks through the night if you can do that in one night its all just one imaginary space. It is a fable from the reconstruction. A lot of the northern missionaries and philanthropists who from the 1860s were very intense on trying to. Once they became disillusioned in that, they turned their attention to the upland south and when they wanted to turn their attention from vermont, they have been on the same side of the board. Co. More. These are the places where they finally found the need to uplift someone in the process. So i think it goes back to the simple fact of the matter being listened to part of the country that won the war. Here is another one just came out a. Its not about the history and the experience through multiple voices. Some of it is critical and we have some defenders and we have this understanding of the complexities. Thank you all very much for coming. [applause] thank you so much for coming. If you need a book they are at the registers. Thank you all