Appalshop and Appalachian Agency

Catherine Herdman

In American mainstream culture, much of the understanding of Appalachian identity is informed, and too often misinformed, by well over a century of stereotypes, both positive and negative, consistently reinforced by every print and visual medium in mainstream American culture. The tapestry of the space Appalachia occupies in American national culture is quite complex–too complex to thrash out fully in a brief essay. However, it is possible at this point, a couple decades into the 21st century and 50+ years into the Appalachian Studies movement, to begin to synthesize an emerging picture of where ideas about the region and its inhabitants originated and why they are still so stunningly pervasive. Just as the region is not a fixed geographic “place,” its culture is diverse, and ideas about both are amorphous. As a whole, Appalachia is best understood as an ever-evolving, fragmented process of negotiation and construction between individuals, communities, artists, activists, politicians, corporations, and other cultural actors deliberately and unintentionally reinvigorating particular narratives about the region and its inhabitants and/or overtly challenging and redefining them.  

Ideas about Appalachia permeate many aspects of the American experience, including debates about fossil fuels, political conflict (and theater), benevolent dedication to issues associated with domestic poverty, and university Appalachian Studies programs, to name a few. Representations abound of the region in print and visual media output—magazine articles, comics, film, literature, television, and music. One particular group in the region has been dedicated to reframing Appalachia in media by providing opportunities for “Appalachians Speaking for Themselves” in the midst of it. Since its humble beginnings in 1969, Appalshop,^[1] a media and arts collective in Whitesburg, Kentucky, has modeled an inspiring example of how adherents to a would-be victimized culture can reclaim some control over how others see them and, more importantly, how people within the culture view themselves. In order to understand the impact of portrayals of the region in media and Appalshop’s role in providing much-needed balance, it is necessary to explore the origin of the idea of “Appalachia,” the propagation of prevalent stereotypes in a variety of media,^[2] the emergence of an Appalachian social and identity movement in the 1970s, and new directions of Appalachian identity in mainstream media in the 21st century.

The Origins of the Idea of Appalachian Identity

The predominant idea underlying Appalachian identity is that Appalachia’s culture and inhabitants are distinct from mainstream or “regular”  Americans. In his influential work on the construction of Appalachian identity, Appalachia on Our Mind (1978), Henry Shapiro argued convincingly that the idea of Appalachia as a region out of step with mainstream America–what he terms the “discovery” of Appalachia–emerged between 1870 and 1900.^[3] The first occurrence he found of published material rooted in this idea was a local color piece in Lippincott’s Magazine in 1873 titled “A Strange Land and a Peculiar People.”^[4] The basis of the local color movement was to find and expose pockets of unique culture that were persisting in the face of a homogenizing national American culture in the decades following the end of the Civil War. Though largely written by people that were by any definition outsiders to these subcultures, readers often regarded the works as authentic. Local color writers did not invent Appalachia, but rather they described for their eager readers an idea that had already taken root—Appalachia was a distinct place with a backwards culture. Its people were “Others” in relation to new ideas about what it meant to be American in the decades following the Civil War and during the period of rapid industrialization at the national level.

This idea that the people of Appalachia were distinctly backward took hold in a powerful way in the context of an emerging “uplift” narrative espoused by benevolent organizations. Berea College president William Goodell Frost described the phenomena perhaps more favorably than local color writers when he characterized Appalachian mountain people as “Our Contemporary Ancestors” and argued for the need to help the region.^[5] However, the notion that something wasn’t right in the region, with little nuance regarding different communities and experiences, clearly underlies even this surface-level compassionate interpretation of it. In concert with Berea College, Northern missionary groups engaged in decades of “benevolent” work and reiterated this narrative through advertising, appeals for funding, catalog sales of “authentic” Appalachian material folklife, and several monographs describing the region from their points of view. In addition to establishing Appalachia as a place dragging behind, this depiction further solidified a powerful corollary–the region was a problem that needed fixing.^[6] 

Scholars have debated at length about why this identity was so compelling—why did it seem so different, so exotic, so frozen in time, and so needing and deserving of outsider “help”? Certainly, one factor is the historical context of an emerging national culture in America that followed the Civil War and the rapid industrialization afterward. It is not a coincidence that the idea of a distinct Appalachia occurred during the same decades. In a general sense, a homogenizing national culture very different from what preceded the war unsurprisingly drew attention to those “pockets” that were lagging behind.^[7] The urban areas on the fringes of the mountains were not treated as part of the region, so as the emphasis turned to large cities in America, Appalachia had none. In a more specific context, industrialists from outside the region were buying up land and developing the infrastructure to begin to exploit parts of the region for its natural resources–specifically timber and coal.  Painting Appalachians as backward-looking people who stood in the way of “progress”^[8] as defined by industrialists and outside capital investors directly served their interests. As speculators and investors gobbled up the land abundant in natural resources, often with ethically and even legally questionable methods, branding any holdouts as savage hillbillies helped to clear the way. Certainly, one major motivation for the “discovery” of Appalachia and its pervasiveness in today’s American cultural landscape is simple: profit.

However, profit motive is an oversimplification, because clearly this idea was not confined to those that stood to gain directly. What motivation did others—both inside and outside the region—possess to internalize and spread the idea that Appalachia was different? Shapiro framed American interest in the region at this particular time as a flexible dichotomy. If a person was critical or fearful of the emerging industrial, comparatively homogeneous post-Civil War American economy and culture, then they could find reassurance and comfort in the idea of a place frozen in (pre-industrial, pre-emancipation) time. If a person saw the changes as positive, then they might feel justified in the portrayal of the region and its inhabitants as backward, violent, and out of touch with the modern world–as savages that threatened to slow the march of inevitable and beneficial progress. Both were powerful and compelling narratives.

Appalachia in Media

Nowhere did the idea of a distinct Appalachia spread more quickly or reach a wider audience than in mass popular print, visual, and musical culture. It is well understood that stories are an important part of any culture—both the stories people tell themselves and each other as well as the stories that others tell from the outside. In the 20th century, America’s cultural stories were primarily told through words and images in magazines and books, on the screen in film and television, and over airwaves with music. As technology related to publishing, radio, film, recorded music, and television expanded, American national culture became more cohesive; as Americans began to read, watch, and listen to much of the same cultural output, ideas about Appalachian identity spread with them.  

Print Magazines, Comics, and Literature

The spread of ideas about Appalachian Otherness in media was largely determined by technology, and print media was the first to propagate it widely. Travel articles written in the style of local color, usually published in serial installments, were the first places Appalachian Otherness showed up in mainstream American culture. As the scope of printed material grew and became more homogenized, comics and other illustrations continued to perpetuate the popularity of stereotyped rural, White, and poor characters. By the first decade of the 20th century, when the word hillbilly became the most popular way to describe poor White mountain people, the prevalent traits were familiar already—poverty, violence, bad hygiene, resistance to progress, pathological kinship ties, and ignorance permeated portrayals of the region.^[9] Though certainly more nuanced than comics, more serious literature like the works of John Fox, Jr., lent credibility to the idea that Appalachians were out of step with mainstream America and feared any intrusion from the “furriners” beyond the mountains.^[10] And as a note on the popularity of stories of the region in the early 20th century, his Trail of the Lonesome Pine, published in 1908, was the first American novel to sell one million copies.

Film and Television

Popular culture in the early 20th century continued to feature many iterations of what had become an American icon–the hillbilly. And the significance of hillbilly and Appalachian characters in American film, and later television, only grew stronger as technology expanded the reach of these popular culture media over the course of the 20th century. In HillbillyLand (1995), a thorough study of Appalachian themes in the silent film era, Jerry W. Williamson explores several archetypes ascribed to mountain people, or hillbillies, in the over 400 films that featured them. He discusses familiar Appalachian tropes such as backwardness, family and kinship ties, and poverty that are intended to “flatter, frighten, and humiliate” the viewers.^[11] But by far Williamson and others who study Appalachia in popular media put the most emphasis on two archetypes–hillbilly as comic fool and hillbilly as dangerous savage. These archetypes, rooted in the late 1800s, were a mainstay in the radio and silent film era, remaining consistent through the advent of TV and are still popular (if lazy) choices for content creators in the 20th and 21st centuries.

Music

Like film, over the course of the 20th century, technological advances took music from a mostly local social activity to mass media with an unimaginable scope of cultural influence. American country music has its roots in Appalachia in a direct way. In 1927, a recording studio held a call for musicians in Bristol, Virginia, effectively launching the careers of several prominent early country stars and ensuring that later Nashville country would be strongly influenced by musicians from the region. However, the less organic, more stereotyped version of Appalachian identity was more popular. Many musicians dressed up like hillbillies and faked Southern accents both to draw listeners and to suggest “authentic” roots. The first waves of recorded, marketed, and widely distributed music in America drew from the dual sources of what was traditional lower-class culture—poor White and poor Black music—country and blues. However, like with film, the focus was on one-dimensional characters, and it is fair to assert that pop music featuring what can be understood as Appalachian themes had little to do with the actual lived experience of most residents in the region.

While it mirrored film in the ways technology influenced scope and nuance was ignored in favor of easy profits, music offered some key differences as a medium. Where print and film representations were more about characters, music focused on style and content. It also opened the door to more pushback earlier than film or television, mostly because it was simpler to create and didn’t require the high-tech equipment film and TV required; sophisticated production was largely unavailable to the masses until later in the 20th century. For example, during the Bloody Harlan strikes of the early 1930s, musicians from the region like Sara Ogan Gunning began to use older, traditional forms such as ballads to express devastating experiences and radical ideas about the economy, the government, and what it means to be both Appalachian and American.^[12] The Bristol Sessions ensured the region had a strong influence on popular “country” music, and the defection of musicians like Gunning and others to Greenwich Village during times of intense economic strife meant they would have a significant influence on the less commercially driven folk revival of the 1930s as well.^[13] This era offered a major turning point: the roots of Appalachian musicians rawly expressing their pain as the industrial dream failed to materialize for most workers and defining what it meant to be Appalachian on their own terms.^[14] Decades later, this era would grow into what can rightly be termed as both an Appalachian cultural renaissance and a social identity movement.

While it is clear that mass popular culture vehicles such as film, music, and comics expanded the audience for Appalachian stereotypes, what is less clear is exactly why hillbilly and Appalachian icons were such a big draw. Why did audiences respond to portrayal after portrayal of poor White people acting foolish or threatening? Anthony Harkins, Jerry Williamson, and others who have closely studied cultural phenomena of Appalachian stereotyping reach similar conclusions to Shapiro: America needs hillbillies. Like other iconic character types, hillbilly characters help Americans to resolve cognitive dissonance about modernization.

 David Hsiung proposed four reasons that Appalachian stereotypes have remained so persistently pervasive.^[15] Two relate to the reasons why people, companies, organizations, governments, and other institutions produce them so prolifically. First, stereotypes related to Appalachian identity are flexible–they can mean almost anything in a wide variety of contexts because “no people or place can be described uniformly.”^[16] And because of that, among other things, they are profitable. The other two relate more specifically to why people consume cultural and artistic output that relies so heavily on overgeneralized characterizations. Hsiung asserts that stereotypes of rural poverty remain popular because they can serve as a “release for mainstream middle America’s fears”^[17] and that “by putting down someone else, …[people] feel better about themselves.” ^[18] In the late 19th century, Appalachia as an “Other” in the context of American nation-building was appealing because it served a variety of seemingly contradictory psychological needs. If a person were dissatisfied with modern America, a way to critique the erosion of a bygone way of life–even an imagined one–was to make Appalachia a place frozen in time, a better time. Conversely, if a person were interested in, or especially stood to profit from, industrialization and the rapid social changes that accompanied it, “traditional” Appalachian culture became an impediment and, for some, even a pathology. Negative generalizations provided justification for disrupting Appalachian communities and wielding power against anyone that stood in the way of “progress” as they defined it.

While it is impossible to pin down exactly why people have been drawn to the idea of stereotypical hillbillies and Appalachians, it is also impossible to deny the strong link between economic self-interest and the production of images, sounds, and texts associated with Appalachian identity. The question of who defines culture, whether it is by outsiders or members within the culture, is ultimately a question of power and resources. In the 1960s and 1970s, the power dynamics that had allowed an almost unanswered flood of negative images and characterizations of the region began to shift—at least a little bit.

Appalshop and the Appalachian Identity Movement

Prior to the 1960s, music is the best example of the complexity of mountain people countering negative portrayals of Appalachian identity. But due to the civil rights movement, and numerous identity movements that followed, resistance to oversimplified characterizations of the region took on a new life. From this point forward, Appalachian identity is best understood as a political, social construction and the negotiation over who controls perception of it is best understood as a social movement. At a national level, the new chapter starts with the War on Poverty. While the War on Poverty attempted to address the very real economic problems the region faced in the 1960s, it was in large part a reaction to and reinforcement of Appalachian Otherness, as well as the idea that government programs would be bestowed upon deserving, true (sometimes also implying “White”) Americans. The region was reeling from mechanization of the coal industry and the accompanying outmigration. National news media attention turned to the region, and journalists mined it for the most sensationalist images and stories they could capture. For example, a 1964 CBS news story called Christmas in Appalachia highlighted the abject poverty of one family.^[19] It features images of children eating dirt, a home using old magazines as wallpaper, and benevolent outsiders bestowing shoes upon the pitifully depicted Appalachian people. Similarly, a Life magazine spread in 1964 called “The Valley of Poverty,” featuring the stark photography of John Dominis and text by Michael Murphy, focused only on the poorest, “disease-ridden and unschooled” people in Appalachia and featured images that were the most shocking to mainstream, middle-class Americans.^[20] 

In many ways, the War on Poverty coverage mirrored the negative portrayals of previous decades. However, in this era of liberal optimism, mainstream America viewed Appalachia in a similar way as the missionary groups had seen it earlier in the century–as a problem that could be fixed. In order to attempt a fix, the federal government created an alphabet soup of agencies aimed at alleviating poverty and elevating what was clearly perceived as a denigrated region not sharing equally in the big American pie of economic success following World War II. The conflicts that ensued between federal and local control of both narratives and resources reflect the deeply complex negotiation about the region, its culture, and its inhabitants that had been brewing under the surface for decades.

When it comes to representations of Appalachia in media, one relatively small program, the Community Film Workshop of Appalachia (CFWA), unintentionally made the most difference in the ongoing conversation between the region and the nation from a cultural point of view.  In 1969, the federal Office of Economic Opportunity (OEO) funded eleven film workshops across the country. The goal of the workshops was to combat a lack of marginalized voices in mainstream media–particularly film. Ten of them came from communities identified as benign home to racially and ethnically marginalized populations, including an Indigenous reservation, Harlem, Puerto Rico, and other areas predominantly populated by marginalized communities. The eleventh was in what most would identify as part of the heart of Appalachia in the small town of Whitesburg, Kentucky. Its goal was to counterbalance stereotypical portrayals of minorities as a result of a lack of representation among the creators of American media. It is remarkable that a predominantly White community was identified, even then, an economic minority who also suffered from negative portrayals in mainstream media.

More remarkable, though, is how Appalshop, mostly a film workshop that was limited in scope and with sparse funding, grew into an artist-controlled multi-media and arts organization that is still dedicated to Appalachian agency–residents who speak for and about themselves–through film, radio, visual arts, roadside theater, and other media. These new technologies increased the utility and effectiveness of documentary film in social movements for justice, equality, and rights of populations emerging from countercultures and marginalized populations that challenged the status quo in American society. Appalshop’s genesis was also an integral part of a renewed interest in Appalachian history, culture, and society–an Appalachian renaissance in the 1960s and 1970s. It provided a window to a wide slice of American history, culture, and media in the midst of profound transformation. Rapidly improving recording technology was part of the inspiration for the film programs. OEO program funding provided access to expensive equipment that made the workshop student-artists’ work possible. For the first time, amateurs could more easily transport and use cameras capable of synchronous sound recording. The students at CFWA were immediately more interested in filmmaking than in job training–in part because they had little hope of securing employment in the target fields without relocating away from home. The program required one three-minute practice film, but the first CFWA film was ten minutes in length and subsequent films were increasingly longer and more in-depth.

When the program funding ran out in 1971, the director and some of the original students were able to keep the equipment and continued to produce documentaries about communities in the Appalachian region under the name of Appalshop.^[21]  They applied for and received grants from such organizations as the National Endowment for the Humanities, and Appalshop quickly became both an integral part of the Appalachian renaissance and a salient example of cutting-edge international trends in documentary filmmaking made possible by the newly available technological advancements. Appalshop artists began screening their films almost immediately. They were generally well received and, in some cases, celebrated with glowing reviews and awards. In creating these films, the students at the CFWA were participating in the international trend in documentary filmmaking.

In the 1970s Appalachia reached a level of cultural self-consciousness. Appalachian Genesis was Appalshop’s first film in 1971, the same year hillbilly buffoons and monsters abounded in examples like Hee Haw and The Beverly Hillbillies on TV and the Oscar-nominated film Deliverance, portraying mountain people as unsophisticated and foolish. Within the region, this era is the start of an outpouring of people expressing their experiences and insights about the region through written word, music, and visual media that truly did not exist before. The kindling of strong traditions, especially in music, was there, but Appalshop, the Appalachian Studies movement, and a host of other organizations, artists, activists, and scholars lit a massive fire in the 1970s that continues to burn brightly. These people have successfully wrested at least some of the power to create, define, and exhibit the many things it means to be Appalachian. Appalshop entered the national dialogue about what it means to be Appalachian. While the specifics of individual film topics and style are fascinating, it helped to re-define Appalachian identity. Appalshop was part of a larger social identity movement in the wake of the civil rights movement that went beyond art and music and included an Appalachian Studies movement and what can reasonably be termed an Appalachian Renaissance of culture and art from within the region.

Appalachian Identity in the Late 20th-21st Century

The comparatively thoughtful and esoteric Appalachian Renaissance did not stop the pervasive use of stereotypical images any more than the civil rights movement, the women’s movement, or other social justice identity movements stopped the stereotyped versions of Others dominating American culture. However, the mechanisms to at least try to push back on the worst offenses have come alive. In popular media, characterizations are often sometimes one-dimensional and riddled with stereotypes, such as less-than-artistic films like Wrong Turn that depicted quasi-human monsters that lurk just off the beaten path in the region. Yet, the simplistic mainstream view has been countered with powerful statements about real issues facing the region like environmental destruction, labor conflicts, prescription drug abuse, and the devastation of poverty with progressively more inspirational characters in films appear in titles like Matewan (1987), October Sky (1999), Cold Mountain (2003), and others. Perhaps the best example of self-consciousness of stereotypes is the playful horror film Tucker and Dale vs. Evil (2010). The main characters still look a lot like the hillbillies of the early 20th century, but in a meta-stereotype switch, the vapid college students that would typically be the victims in a classic horror scenario are actually the monsters while  Tucker and Dale are kind and insightful and manage to save the day.

America’s hillbillies are noticeably a little more complex than they were in the early 20th century, and in the 21st century revival of documentary filmmaking, writers have offered more in-depth discussion of mass culture’s use of Appalachian and hillbilly themes. Journalist and filmmaker Elaine McMillion Sheldon explored the boom-and-bust nature of coal towns via Hollow (2013), an interactive documentary with web-based storytelling that focused on lived experiences in McDowell County in her home state of West Virginia. Similarly, Appalachian Kentucky-born filmmaker Ashley York tackled ongoing stereotypes in Hillbilly (2018), co-directed with Sally Rubin, complicating cultural perceptions with personal interviews of family members, workers, artists, and writers who illustrate the media-driven and political exploitation of Appalachia as a monolithic region.

Another example of cultural pushback occurred when the Center for Rural Strategies, also out of Whitesburg, took out full-page ads as part of an organized campaign to stop a reality show called The True Adventures of the Real Beverly Hillbillies (2007). It is not clear to what degree their efforts were the deciding factor, but the show never aired, which can be viewed as a small victory. However, what is perplexing is that numerous people were willing to participate and even celebrate such a show. And numerous other reality shows with Appalachian themes were made, including Moonshiners (2011), My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding (2012), and the popular Call of the Wildman (2011), featuring the infamous Turtle Man of Kentucky. Perhaps the best known is the Wild and Wonderful Whites of West Virginia (2009)–based on the descendants of famous outlaw dancer Jessco White. It is a microcosm of the contradictions of Appalahian identity in the late 20th and 21st centuries.

Perhaps OxyContin has replaced moonshining, but Appalachian themes in media still revolve around poverty, ignorance, and a resistance to progress in many forms. What makes it even more complex is that some people within the region have embraced hillbilly identity and attempted to co-opt negative portrayals by reframing them as positive–some in ways that are inspiring, and others in ways that are shameful. The stereotypes have taken on a life of their own. This seemingly contradictory trend is on full display in the Hillbilly Days festival in Pikeville, Kentucky, held since 1977. It draws the second-largest crowds in the state after the Kentucky Derby, and it is hard to make a case to students that this festival is somehow offensive. Many of them have attended and had a great time at the event. They believe it is for a good cause. However, the act of middle-class and higher-income earners dressing up like poor people and walking around with “hillbilly” teeth in, carrying jugs marked “XXX,” all funded in large part by big coal, encapsulates the contradiction.

A reiteration of the contradictory notions of the region hit the mainstream U.S. zeitgeist in 2020: the film interpretation of J.D. Vance’s controversial memoir Hillbilly Elegy, published in 2016. Produced by Netflix and directed by acclaimed and popular director Ron Howard, it embodies the complex nuances of what it means to be Appalachian in America. While scholars have raised serious and reasonable objections to its negative portrayal of the region, many viewers see something else in it–the opportunity to confront and understand aspects of their upbringing that were painful along with pathologies that influenced their worldviews. Ultimately, even the choice to focus on this kind of story rather than something more substantive that might portray a more balanced view of the region itself reflects the degradation of Appalachian identity for over a century in media, and the missing context of why these people might find themselves with a limited range of choices is an even graver sin of omission. However, industry people know well what consumers will respond to and the popularity of the book and its film adaptation belies the idea that it is really out of step with how outsiders and even many within the region view Appalachia.

Appalshop, on the other hand, is thriving in the 21st century—adapting to meet new challenges, such as the flood of 2022 that devastated their teaching facilities, destroyed their filming equipment, and damaged their archive.^[22] The organization persists in its goal to realize the potential of new technologies in creative and effective ways and providing each new generation of Appalachians with a voice to define for themselves what their experiences in the mountains mean to them. Within Appalachian media, Appalshop has been a cultural leader, offering representation of non-White communities with over eighty film titles, interviews, and artifact collections that pertain directly to the Black community within Appalachia. The organization has also depicted the LGBTQQIAAP2S+ community, with such queer content-specific films as Belinda (1992), Through Their Eyes: Stories of Gays and Lesbians in the Mountains (1999), Zero Tolerance (2006), A Little Piece of Me (2011), Not a Daughter (2016), and Welcome to Dragalachia (2013) among others that mention queer identity in Appalachia.

With cautious optimism, it is possible now to assert that even mainstream culture has adapted to a more nuanced view of the region and its culture in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. As an increasing number of Appalachian residents comes out, artists from the region have been outspoken in their support. For example, award-winning country musicians like Tyler Childers, Kacey Musgraves, and Chris Stapleton among others have achieved commercial success without resorting to monolithic stereotypes of rural White people, and they have made music as well as public statements about their support of marginalized communities, willing to take the risk of losing some politically conservative fans who disagree.^[23] In 2023 when Childers released “In Your Love” and its accompanying video that showed positive treatment of the relationship between two gay men, some backlash occurred, but others point to his allyship as the non-conformist tradition of country music, categorizing Childers’ song “what real outlaw country is.”^[24] Musgraves actively supports the LGBTQQIAAP2S+ community, speaking out against discriminatory laws and collaborating with queer artists and drag performers.^[25] In interviews and on tours, Chris Stapleton has denounced racism and voiced his support of Black Lives Matter.^[26] 

Conclusion

Like Appalshop, Appalachian Studies programs at universities and the journals, books, classes, and studies continue to view Appalachian-ness as an identity movement, acknowledging all the complexities and contradictions that academic study of any group brings to the table. However, scholars since the 1970s have embarked in countless research that exhibits a diverse and complex region of people that defy the generalizations and stereotypes that permeated media representations of the region in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Appalachian identity is a construct with a long history and seemingly unfailing resilience. People relate to it. Its media depiction makes money. And while there is a long tradition of Appalachian culture, Americans are not immune to the draw of a simpler, sensationalistic version of Appalachia. But constructed identities are a double-edged sword. They can divide as much as they can unite. While there is something inspiring about people embracing Appalachian identity and defining it for themselves in a more positive way, it is impossible to ignore the underlying idea that the region is somehow, as a whole, distinct from mainstream American culture. This popular notion will continue to have devastating consequences—politically, environmentally, and personally to people who identify as Appalachian and must confront a dark history of portrayals that fail to illustrate who they are.

It is much too limited to view Appalshop and other organizations and individuals that act with integrity in constructing Appalachian identity as a “solution” to negative portrayals of the region. More accurately, these makers are models of agency and serve as beacons in the conversation of Appalachian identity. On one level, Appalachian identity is largely controlled by people in power and corporations with clear agendas; on another, it is a conversation between cultural actors that plays out in a wide variety of media; and on still another level—likely the most salient—it is a personal choice, hopefully the result of a mix of critical analysis and gut feeling, that everyone related to the region makes and revises over the course of their lives.

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