Appalachian writers fire back at 'Hillbilly Elegy' in anthology

"J.D. Vance’s Hillbilly Elegy, the surprise best seller published in 2016, is a frisky memoir with a bit of conservative moralizing dangling off, like the price tag on Minnie Pearl’s hat. Nearly everyone likes the memoir sections. (His portrait of his grandmother, a 'pistol-packing lunatic,' is indelible.) The moralizing has been divisive," Dwight Garner writes for The New York Times. "A new anthology, Appalachian Reckoning: A Region Responds to 'Hillbilly Elegy,' edited by Anthony Harkins and Meredith McCarroll, presents the most sustained pushback to Vance’s book (soon to be a Ron Howard movie) thus far. It’s a volley of intellectual buckshot from high up alongside the hollow." Read more here.