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WORK TITLE: What You Are Getting Wrong About Appalachia
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE: https://elizabethcatte.com/
CITY:
STATE: VA
COUNTRY: United States
NATIONALITY: American
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Female.
EDUCATION:University of Tennessee, Knoxville, B.A.; Middle Tennessee State University, M.A., Ph.D.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Middle Tennessee State University, Murfreesboro, instructor, 2012–16; Passel (consulting firm), director, 2016–.
WRITINGS
Contributor to periodicals and Websites, including Literary Hub, Trillbilly Worker’s Party, Indivisible, This is Hell!, Paste magazine, Rewire, and Salon.
SIDELIGHTS
Historian Elizabeth Catte grew up in East Tennessee, and she grew up visiting extended family in Southwestern Virginia, all parts of Appalachia. Catte’s book, What You Are Getting Wrong about Appalachia, draws on both the author’s personal and academic insight into the area, and it also serves as a rebuttal to J.D. Vance’s bestselling memoir Hillbilly Elegy. Catte dispels several myths that Vance perpetuates in his book, and she finds that Appalachia is a widely diverse region that can not be described under a single unifying umbrella. Instead of exploring Appalachia as a bastion of white poverty, Catte describes a region beset by industrialists. In the wake of globalization, this has translated into lost jobs, flailing wages, and class warfare. Catte offers a detailed history of Appalachia in support of her claims, including discussions of labor uprisings and the prison-industrial complex (which has risen as the coal industry has fallen).
As the author noted in an online Outline, interview with Ann-Derrick Gaillot, “people in regions like Appalachia, poor white people, have always received the projected angst of more comfortable and stable white Americans. There’s a long history of that in Appalachia and I think there’s lots of parallels in our current political moment about that, certain regions and certain people just absolving all of the country’s sin so people can continue to feel self-righteous and progressive.” Catte added: “It’s a concise narrative. It is a confident narrative. And it’s been deployed quite successfully by J.D. Vance himself. He’s accepted roles as a political pundit talking head, doing Ted Talks, and a really ambitious public speaking agenda, so it’s a really multipronged platform that this book has. One of my favorite things to see people do is compare J.D. Vance to Ta-Nehisi Coates which happens a lot in conservative publications, like the American Conservative. And I think it’s incredible because there’s an idea at work that people from groups that are under-represented can only have one spokesperson and one translator at a time. You see that within African-American literature and journalism. This is a role that J.D. Vance has assumed as well, the tour guide, the interpreter, the translator to a misunderstood culture.”
According to a Kirkus Reviews critic, “Catte’s writing is not as colorful as Vance’s,” but her book refuses to allow his version of Appalachia to stand unchallenged.” The result of Catte’s efforts is “a bold refusal to submit to stereotype.” A Publishers Weekly contributor was also positive, asserting: “Though this work could have been more tightly edited, it succeeds in providing a richer, more complex view of a much-maligned region.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Kirkus Reviews, November 1, 2017, review of What You Are Getting Wrong about Appalachia.
Publishers Weekly, October 23, 2017, review of What You Are Getting Wrong about Appalachia.
ONLINE
Elizabeth Catte Website, https://elizabethcatte.com (March 12, 2018).
Outline, https://theoutline.com/ (March 12, 2018), Ann-Derrick Gaillot, author interview.
About Elizabeth + Contact
Hi, I’m Elizabeth.
I’m a public historian and writer based in the Shenandoah Valley, Virginia. In accordance with an ancient curse, my last name is pronounced “cat.”
I’m the author of the forthcoming What You Are Getting Wrong About Appalachia, a critical look Hillbilly Elegy-fication of politics that uses radical history to challenge perceptions of the region as a hub of white, working-class woe.
My work has been featured in or on Belt Magazine, Rewire, Salon, 100 Days in Appalachia, On the Media, Literary Hub, Trillbilly Worker’s Party, Indivisible, This is Hell!, Dialogue by WUOT, Paste Magazine, and AM Joy with Joy-Ann Reid on MSNBC. If you’d like me to write for you or want to book a speaking engagement, please get in touch via elizabeth.catte@gmail.com.
I’m the Director of Passel, a socially-conscious historical consulting firm. What’s socially-conscious consulting? We offer pro-bono grant writing, research, and development assistance to community organizations, non-profits, and unions in Appalachia.
If traditional CVs are more your thing, feel free to take a look at mine. I have a PhD in public history with a dissertation on historical memory and reparations.
I’m also the current co-chair of the rural outreach committee for the Democratic Socialists of America Charlottesville chapter.
In my spare time, I like to take pictures, play vidja games, and curate a website dedicated to food featured on King of the Hill called Pork Chop Night.
For media inquiries related to What You Are Getting Wrong About Appalachia such as advance review copies or press packets, please contact Michelle Blankenship.
3
1Staunton, Virginia| elizabeth.catte@gmail.com| elizabethcatte.comCURRENT EMPLOYMENTDirector, Passel Historical Consultants (May 2016-present)Description: A full service firm specializing in socially-conscious community history| passelhc.comEDUCATIONPh.D., Public History.Middle Tennessee State University, Murfreesboro, TNDissertation Title: “No Deed But Memory: The Public History of AmericanRace Riots”Exam Fields: Public History, Modern American History, History of Sexuality, Cultural HistoryCommittee: Dr. Pippa Holloway (chair), Dr. Rebecca Conard, Dr. Mark Doyle, Dr. Louis WoodsM.A., American History.Middle Tennessee State University, Murfreesboro, TNAreas of Specialization: Public History, Museum Studies, Modern American HistoryThesis: “Hobby as Culture and Enchantment: Urban Exploration as History-Making”B.A., Latin and Classical Studies (double major).University ofTennessee, Knoxville, TNMinors: Greek, HistoryPUBLICATIONS, PRINTCatte, Elizabeth. What You Are Getting Wrong About Appalachia(forthcomingFebruary 2018, Belt).Catte, Elizabeth. Collection of Responses to Hillbilly Elegy, title TBA (forthcoming Spring 2019, WVU Press).Catte, Elizabeth and Josh Howard. “A Secret Fascination: Professional Wrestling, Gender Non-Conformity,and Masculinity,” in Wrestling with Identity: Nation, Race, and Culture in Professional Wrestling (forthcoming, McFarland).Catte, Elizabeth and Pippa Holloway. “Queer Rural,” in Routledge Anthology of Queer History (forthcoming)Catte, Elizabeth. “Uses of Heritage on the Isle of Man,” Public History Review 22 (2015): 8-22.Catte, Elizabeth. “Military Race Riots in the Second World War,” Americanist Independent1, no. 6(December 2014): 45-64PUBLICATIONS, WEBCatte, Elizabeth. “What Hillary Clintonis Still Getting Wrong about Appalachia.”Belt Magazinevia
2Catte, Elizabeth. “In Appalachia, Solidarity for the Rust Belt.” Belt Magazine via
3“TeachingPublic History through International Collaborations,” National Council on Public History annual meeting, Nashville, TN, 2015“How to do LGBT+ History,” MT Lambda LGBT+ Conference, Murfreesboro, TN“Wrestling with Reality: The WWE and Representations of Male Sexuality,” International Association for Communication in Sport Summit, Charlotte, NC, 2015“The Harlem Hellfighters and the Politics of Black Manhood,” Graduate Association for African AmericanHistory annual conference, Memphis, TN 2015“Long Way Gone: Reflections on the Built Landscape of Cairo, IL,” Ohio River Valley History Conference,Clarksville, TN 2014“The Cultural Afterlife of the Tennessee State Prison,” Kentucky-Tennessee American Studies Associationannual conference, Murfreesboro, TN 2014“The Legacy of Caroline Ware,” Phi Alpha Theta regional conference, Cookeville, TN 2014“Recovering Their Stories: African Americans on the Davis Plantation, 1850-1925,” Tennessee Associationof Museums annual conference, Murfreesboro, TN, 2007“Urban Exploration: The Search for Authenticity in a Post-Modern Metropolis,” American Historical Association annual meeting, Atlanta, GA, 2007
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Print Marked Items
Catte, Elizabeth: WHAT YOU ARE
GETTING WRONG ABOUT
APPALACHIA
Kirkus Reviews.
(Nov. 1, 2017):
COPYRIGHT 2017 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Full Text:
Catte, Elizabeth WHAT YOU ARE GETTING WRONG ABOUT APPALACHIA Belt Publishing (Adult
Nonfiction) $16.95 2, 6 ISBN: 978-0-9989041-4-6
A terse rebuttal to the vision of Appalachia popularized by J.D. Vance's Hillbilly Elegy (2016).
As a historian from East Tennessee whose politics are to the left of Vance's, Catte skewers his "asinine
beliefs and associations," which she connects with white-supremacist eugenics and insists do not reflect the
rich diversity and often radical activism that she sees in her native region. Vance, she writes, somehow
"transforms Elegy from a memoir of a person to the memoir of a culture," a culture that is monolithically
white and Scots-Irish, conservative, and culturally backward. In Catte's analysis, much of the growth in the
region has come from younger minorities, and most of the problems endemic to it have come from outside
corporations that have exploited both its natural resources and its workforce. Furthermore, that power
structure has wielded considerable political influence, just as money does elsewhere. Though she finds the
term problematic, she says that the model of "internal colony" better explains the region's dynamics, as
powerful outside forces control the region's resources and shape its destiny, with the residents becoming
mere pawns in their game. In the 2016 presidential election, white voters in the region supported Donald
Trump, as conservative white voters did elsewhere, but there was also considerable support for the brand of
populism espoused by Bernie Sanders. As for Hillary Clinton's ill-considered comment about how "we're
going to put a lot of coal miners and coal companies out of business," Catte writes, "it's not possible for
anyone with more than passing knowledge of Appalachia and the coal industry to listen to those comments
without cringing, regardless of one's political affiliation." Though Catte's writing is not as colorful as
Vance's, her book refuses to allow his version of Appalachia to stand unchallenged.
A bold refusal to submit to stereotype.
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"Catte, Elizabeth: WHAT YOU ARE GETTING WRONG ABOUT APPALACHIA." Kirkus Reviews, 1
Nov. 2017. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A512028582/ITOF?
u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=7492f06f. Accessed 4 Mar. 2018.
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What You Are Getting Wrong About
Appalachia
Publishers Weekly.
264.43 (Oct. 23, 2017): p72.
COPYRIGHT 2017 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
What You Are Getting Wrong About Appalachia
Elizabeth Catte. Belt, $16.95 trade paper (150p) ISBN 978-0-9989041-4-6
Catte, a historian from East Tennessee, presents a thoughtful insider's perspective on Appalachia to
counteract the stereotypes associated with the region. She believes that Appalachia--a region of 25 million
people encompassing 700,000 square miles across 13 states--is too often presented as a monolithic,
dysfunctional "other America" or "white ghetto." Catte's Appalachia is instead a "battleground, where
industry barons, social reformers, and workers" wage an intergenerational class war. She offers a brief but
nuanced history of the region that covers the post-Civil War arrival of industry, the early20th-century labor
uprisings against exploitative coal companies, government intervention during the 1960s War on Poverty,
and the oversize role played in Appalachia's economy by the current "prison-industrial complex." Catte also
effectively refutes what she refers to as Hillbilly Elegy author J.D. Vance's "myth"--that white Appalachians
share a distinct, homogenous Scots-Irish heritage, rather than a fusion of various European ethnic groups.
To highlight the region's diversity, she observes that for the past three decades African-Americans and
Hispanics have contributed most to the area's population growth and that West Virginia, the only entirely
Appalachian state, has the nation's highest concentration of transgender teens. Though this work could have
been more tightly edited, it succeeds in providing a richer, more complex view of a much-maligned region.
(Feb.)
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"What You Are Getting Wrong About Appalachia." Publishers Weekly, 23 Oct. 2017, p. 72. General
OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A512184200/ITOF?
u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=a5e35b53. Accessed 4 Mar. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A512184200
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Historian Makes Case For 'What You Are
Getting Wrong About Appalachia' In
New Book
All Things Considered.
2018.
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HOST: KELLY MCEVERS
KELLY MCEVERS: Appalachia is this long, diagonal region that stretches from New York state down to
Alabama - 400 counties, 25 million people. And the story of Appalachia has been told many times over the
decades often by writers and photographers who travel there to show poverty and struggle. More recently
during the campaign of Donald Trump, who got a lot of support in Appalachia, the story of the region was
told by a writer named J.D. Vance in his book "Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir Of A Family And Culture In
Crisis."
Vance wrote about his family history of drug addiction and violence. And since then, he's become a kind of
spokesperson for the region. None of this sits well with Elizabeth Catte. She's an historian based in Virginia
who has written a slim-but-pointed rebuttal to J.D. Vance. It's called "What You Are Getting Wrong About
Appalachia."
ELIZABETH CATTE: There's a projection of his realities onto the lives of everybody in the region, and it's
not in my mind accidental. It's right there in the subtitle of the book. It's a memoir of a family, but is also a
memoir of a culture in crisis. The universalizing that is done in the book is something that's become a
trademark of J.D. Vance's engagement as a pundit and a political up-and-comer. And so my book is
certainly a criticism of "Hillbilly Elegy," but I'd also like it to be read as an interruption to a claim of
ownership about my life and the people around me.
MCEVERS: How do you think people think of Appalachia now because of projects like this? And what
would you like to tell those people? (Laughter) You know, like, what image would you like to sort of
replace in their mind?
CATTE: Something very ordinary. I think the problem that we're starting to see from "Hillbilly Elegy" - and
it's certainly not a new problem in Appalachia. It tends to come in waves. There's an idea that Appalachia is
not fundamentally part of the United States, that it's a place within a place, and it's not a place but a
problem. I would like people to understand that Appalachia is very much part of the wider United States.
There's no mysterious culture here that explains the - you know, the realities. And our stories - the story of
Appalachia cannot be separated from the story of the United States and the historical forces that have
shaped us.
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MCEVERS: There's this genre of campaign reporting that you talk about in your book. It's called the
Welcome To Trump Country piece, right? You've got a reporter from The New York Times or The Guardian
or The New Yorker or The New Republic coming to a small town in Appalachia, talking to the forgotten
white people who were left behind by a global economy and how these people explain, you know, the rise
of Donald Trump. You have a problem with these stories. Explain why.
CATTE: The piece that's often left out of them is what it feels like to be on the other end of those stories.
And Appalachia has a long history of absorbing people in my book I call strangers with cameras, people
who come to the region maybe not to see just poverty but a particular kind of poverty that they need and
want to find.
The last moment that we had that comes to mind when I think of parallels was the war on poverty during
the 1960s. This is the flurry of related legislation to remediate poverty. So we had a lot of reporters come to
the region to take pictures of people who were experiencing poverty and extreme hardship because they
needed to get the voting public to sympathize with poverty and the conditions that people experienced when
they were in poverty.
And that created an overabundance of images that really left an enduring impression on the national
imagination of what people think of when they think of Appalachia. They think of shacks. They think of
people barefoot, dirty, you know, covered in coal dust. And that's left a big impression that we're still
dealing with.
MCEVERS: So how do you talk about the region then?
CATTE: When I talk about Appalachia and I say that I think that there should be better coverage about
Appalachia, I certainly don't mean that there should be more flattering coverage of Appalachia.
MCEVERS: Right. There is still poverty, right? And there - you know, the region is mostly white, and - so
yeah, how do you talk about that in terms of...
CATTE: Yeah, so we just want more nuance I think. We need to kind of diversify the narrative of the region
and acknowledge that it can't be contained in a single election or a single person's life. And I think one of
the things I see now when I read comments on news articles and kind of engage with people online is that
they want stories about how people who are vulnerable are weathering this administration - like, people of
color, members of the LGBT community, new immigrants. My basic point is that Appalachia has those
stories, too.
MCEVERS: Elizabeth Catte is an historian based in Virginia. Her new book is called "What You Are
Getting Wrong About Appalachia." Thank you so much.
CATTE: Thank you.
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Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"Historian Makes Case For 'What You Are Getting Wrong About Appalachia' In New Book." All Things
Considered, 31 Jan. 2018. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A529599331/ITOF?
u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=ad4708fc. Accessed 4 Mar. 2018.
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Gale Document Number: GALE|A529599331