Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis, by VanceJ. D., New York: HarperCollins, 2016. 264 pp. $27.99 (cloth). ISBN: 978‐0‐06‐230054‐6.What You Are Getting Wrong about Appalachia, by CatteElizabeth, Cleveland, OH: Belt, 2018. 146 pp. $16.95 (paper). ISBN: 978‐0‐9989041‐4‐6.Ramp Hollow: The Ordeal of Appalachia, by StollSteven, New York: Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 2017. 410 pp. $30.00 (cloth). ISBN: 970‐0‐80‐99505‐6.

Take Care When Cutting

“…Problematically, popular media continuously harden overstated stereotypes about a nonrural/rural divide (e.g., Zitner & Overberg, 2016). Many celebrated authors, most notably Vance (2016), promulgate the "hillbilly trope", lampooning and further marginalizing the communities, cultures, aspirations, and opportunities of people who live, by most geographic definitions, beyond the metro-normative margins (Peine & Schafft, 2018;Roberts & Green, 2013). Importantly, some scholars counter such illinformed accounts of rural and/or remote places by eschewing monolithic depictions about places that too many policy makers dismiss as "fly-over country" (see Catte, 2018;Cramer, 2016;Wuthnow, 2019).…”