Appalachian Reckoning Quotes

“Elegies are poems dedicated to the dead. The American hillbilly(assuming we can use that word for the white working class) isn't dead; she is just poor.”
― Anthony Harkins, Appalachian Reckoning: A Region Responds to Hillbilly Elegy

“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 do so. For that reason, the book should have been titled Hillbilly Reprimand, because Vance doesn't want to mourn his hillbilly family. He wants to make them good proletarians like they allegedly were in the twentieth century.”
― Anthony Harkins, Appalachian Reckoning: A Region Responds to Hillbilly Elegy

“On election season politicos dawn their timber boots and red handkerchiefs. Many claim salt of the earth roots every time they eat a watermelon, but they never bite the bitterness of the rind. Everyone likes a good show and the politics of poverty never disappoint.”
― Anthony Harkins, Appalachian Reckoning: A Region Responds to Hillbilly Elegy

“Appalachia, in fact, is a very matriarchal culture. We revere our grandmothers and mothers.”
― Anthony Harkins, Appalachian Reckoning: A Region Responds to Hillbilly Elegy

“In Appalachia, everyone has a fierce granny story.”
― Anthony Harkins, Appalachian Reckoning: A Region Responds to Hillbilly Elegy

“Amidst the blue ridge mountains, there are remarkable expressions of life. Tapestries woven by generations that are always on trial by those who amputate hope from what once was native land. Digesting each day, the unpleasant taste of yesterday's homemade buttermilk.”
― Anthony Harkins, Appalachian Reckoning: A Region Responds to Hillbilly Elegy

“The role story plays in the construction of who we are, where we are, should never be underestimated. The question becomes, who has the right to choose the stories we tell ourselves?”
― Edward Karshner, Appalachian Reckoning: A Region Responds to Hillbilly Elegy

“If that’s the way God wants it, I rekon that’s the way it’ll be,” says the reimagined mountaineer. I’m sure, as well, that this is the very lens that directed Vance to depict his Appalachia as being marked by “spiritual and material poverty.”5 In the stories I was taught, however, this kind of metaphysical laziness toward adversity would have been treated like blasphemy.”
― Edward Karshner, Appalachian Reckoning: A Region Responds to Hillbilly Elegy

“Power can manifest itself only when imposed on another. It is an illusion of the most selfish cooperation and is to be confronted and confounded whenever possible. Respect, on the other hand, is something you earn by overcoming the weakest part of yourself, exposed by defeat or humiliation. Respect is yours to share with another person of your choice.”
― Edward Karshner, Appalachian Reckoning: A Region Responds to Hillbilly Elegy

“Appalachian values stress a struggle against adversity, not the passive acceptance of it as the stereotype of fatalism suggests—or demands.”
― Edward Karshner, Appalachian Reckoning: A Region Responds to Hillbilly Elegy

“We all fall short. Even the people in our stories. They cried. They hurt. They drank too much. They died too young. They could be hard when we needed comfort. But, we should never be ashamed of them.”
― Edward Karshner, Appalachian Reckoning: A Region Responds to Hillbilly Elegy

“Didion writes about self-respect as a kind of “separate peace, a private reconciliation,” which has nothing to do with the approval of others or reputation. It’s a kind of courage that allows a person to leave the expectations of others unmet and to own one’s mistakes.”
― Edward Karshner, Appalachian Reckoning: A Region Responds to Hillbilly Elegy

“This will never be a pure, self-sufficient life. That myth died when the weasel beheaded our chickens thirty years ago. So we do the best we can to do as little harm as we can.”
― Edward Karshner, Appalachian Reckoning: A Region Responds to Hillbilly Elegy