The “I” in Appalachia: A Dual Assessment of Contemporary Memoirs from a Misunderstood Place

To be Appalachian means many things, and to be from Appalachia means just as many more. The only way to earn a sense of Appalachia is to invest in firsthand accounts of those who live there, as well as those who left. I left. My younger brother stayed. When we talk to one another about Appalachia, or our hometown within it, we argue over widely held cultural beliefs about the region and the way it is often portrayed in popular culture, or discussed in the national media. In an attempt to come to terms with our conflicting beliefs about the region, we have identified a number of contemporary memoirs by Appalachian authors, such as Walls\u27 The Glass Castle, Vance\u27s Hillbilly Elegy, and Mann\u27s Edge: Travels of an Appalachian Leather Bear. We will individually evaluate each memoir for Appalachian representation, clichés, cultural truths, and what each memoir adds to the cultural milieu. We will compare impressions of each memoir, and decide whether or not each one confirms or changes the convictions of the one who stayed and experiences Appalachia daily, or the one who left and studies it from afar. Essentially, we are weighing the individual opinions of an idealistic girl who left and became a humanities professor, and an idealistic boy who stayed, skipped college, and runs a gun store in the pill mill capital of the world