Book description
Much criticism has been directed at negative stereotypes of
Appalachia perpetuated by movies, television shows, and news media.
Books, on the other hand, often draw enthusiastic praise for their
celebration of the simplicity and authenticity of the Appalachian region.
Dear Appalachia: Readers, Identity, and Popular Fiction since 1878
employs the innovative new strategy of examining fan mail, reviews,
and readers' geographic affiliations to understand how readers have
imagined the region and what purposes these imagined geographies have
served for them. As Emily Satterwhite traces the changing visions of
Appalachia across the decades, from the Gilded Age (1865--1895) to the
present, she finds that every generation has produced an audience
hungry for a romantic version of Appalachia.
According to Satterwhite, best-selling fiction has portrayed
Appalachia as a distinctive place apart from the mainstream United
States, has offered cosmopolitan white readers a sense of identity and
community, and has engendered feelings of national and cultural pride.
Thanks in part to readers' faith in authors as authentic
representatives of the regions they write about, Satterwhite argues,
regional fiction often plays a role in creating and affirming regional
identity. By mapping the geographic locations of fans, Dear Appalachia
demonstrates that mobile white readers in particular, including
regional elites, have idealized Appalachia as rooted, static, and
protected from commercial society in order to reassure themselves that
there remains an "authentic" America untouched by global currents.
Investigating texts such as John Fox Jr.'s The Trail of the Lonesome
Pine (1908), Harriette Arnow's The Dollmaker (1954), James Dickey's
Deliverance (1970), and Charles Frazier's Cold Mountain (1997), Dear
Appalachia moves beyond traditional studies of regional fiction to
document the functions of these narratives in the lives of readers,
revealing not only what people have thought about Appalachia, but why.
""Satterwhite takes a look at how this area has been so
variously portrayed in literature over the years, going far beyond
just what readers and writers have decided, but why they have come to
these conclusions and stereotypical viewpoints."--Knoxville News
Sentinel" --
Emily Satterwhite, assistant professor of Appalachian studies,
American studies, and popular culture at Virginia Tech, has published
in American Literature, Journal of American Folklore, and Appalachian Journal.
