How a Book Changed My Assumptions about Appalachia
By George Black, Exclusive Buyer Agent - Johnson City TN
(A Buyer's Best Choice Realty)
For those of you new to east Tennessee and asking yourself, “Where have I landed?” You are not alone—I felt the same way when I arrived three years ago. I felt like a foreigner. Despite the stunning mountains and friendly people, I saw what I expected to see. My mental concept of Appalachia was a decades long accumulation of negative cultural stereotypes from TV, movies and the wide-spread cultural bias of careless-thinking people who accepted the image of “poor, no class, ignorant hillbilly” as a fair representation of Appalachian reality. As they sing in Porgy and Bess, “It ain’t necessarily so!” (Although there are some stereotypical “hillbillies” here, you can find those folks just about anywhere in this country.) The single, most powerful influence in my re-education, the one that...
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