Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH), the newly-minted running mate to former President Donald Trump, is mischaracterizing and demonizing people from Appalachia, said Meredith McCarroll, a writer who grew up in Western North Carolina, on CNN Thursday.
Vance, a former venture capitalist who previously opposed Trump and many of his far-right policy positions before running for Senate in Ohio, is best known for his "Hillbilly Elegy" memoir discussing his upbringing in Middle America.
"It's an emotional retelling of his often difficult upbringing, split between Middletown, Ohio, and Eastern Kentucky, but there are some folks in the region that says he says he's not truly from Appalachia and his characterization of it is actually hurting folks," said anchor Sara Sidner.
"What do you think was misrepresented about people who live in Appalachia when you sort of went through it, because you said the beginning of the book, it resonated, it was his story, it was him telling it from a personal perspective, and it's very impactful to anyone who grew up with with no means," said Sidner, turning to McCarroll.
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"I think that what happened for me and for a lot of readers was this shift that happens from first-person singular where he's — when he's telling the story ... I can follow that. I can read that, like I said, with a lot of empathy," said McCarroll. "But he does something in the book that frankly doesn't really get captured in the film, because a book is an easier format for this than a film. But he really shifts to talking about 'we' and he speaks on behalf of the entirety of Appalachia, which is something that I would never claim to do."
The problem with that, she said, is "It's a 13-state region spanning 200,000 square miles with 25 million people," and Vance is essentially saying, "This is my experience and therefore, I'll tell you what we are like. And that's really what offended so many people from the region. It's not only that he's saying really negative things, he's talking about the ways that Appalachian people are innately violent and that the poverty that is in certain places in Appalachia is of their own doing, he's making a claim about a huge region and that's — even if he was saying romantic things about it, I think that that would be problematic and was problematic to me. You can see the broad brush. When you do that to any group of people, can be problematic."
Watch the video below or at this link.
Meredith McCarroll outlines the problem with "Hillbilly Elegy"www.youtube.com
