Back Talk from Appalachia: Confronting Stereotypes by Dwight B Billings:  Product Information
Appalachia has long been stereotyped as a region of feuds, moonshine stills, mine wars, environmental destruction, joblessness, and hopelessness. Robert Schenkkan's 1992 Pulitzer-Prize winning play The Kentucky Cycle once again adopted these stereotypes, recasting the American myth as a story of repeated failure and poverty--the failure of the American spirit and the poverty of the American soul. Dismayed by national critics' lack of attention to the negative depictions of mountain people in the play, a group of Appalachian scholars rallied against the stereotypical representations of the region's people. In Back Talk from Appalachia, these writers talk back to the American mainstream, confronting head-on those who view their home region one-dimensionally. The essays, written by historians, literary scholars, sociologists, creative writers, and activists, provide a variety of responses. Some examine the sources of Appalachian mythology in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century literature. Others reveal personal experiences and examples of grassroots activism that confound and contradict accepted images of ""hillbillies."" The volume ends with a series of critiques aimed directly at The Kentucky Cycle and similar contemporary works that highlight the sociological, political, and cultural assumptions about Appalachia fueling today's false stereotypes.
Product Identifiers
Publisher	University Press of Kentucky
ISBN-10	0813190010
ISBN-13	9780813190013
Product ID (ePID)	1729005
Product Key Features
Format	Trade Paperback
Language	English
Publication Year	2000
Genre	Psychology, History, Social Science, Juvenile Nonfiction
Number of Pages	368 Pages
Dimensions
Item Length	9in.
Item Height	0.7in.
Item Width	6in.
Item Weight	17.6 Oz
Additional Product Features
Lc Classification Number	F210.C66 2001
Edition Description	Reprint