A Conversation About Appalachia

Do you want to have a conversation about Appalachia? If so, I’m going to ask that we make sure to include acknowledgement of the centuries of systemic economic exploitation that have shaped our region. While my art often touches on the wondrous and wonderful parts of being from here, there are other things we need to discuss. (If you’ve followed my music and performances, you know I often discuss the ways that it wasn’t always comfortable to be from Kentucky.)

The JD Vances of the world would analyze our “culture problem” and the challenges faced by our people while glossing over the profound effects of years of not having a fair tax system in place to fund an infrastructure (roads, schools, hospitals) reflective of the vast wealth leaving the mountains on coal trains and timber trucks.

Pundits like Vance would ignore the ways that the mountaineer at every turn was denied many of the pathways to building generational wealth that other Americans had. (And it’s worth noting that countless Black Americans were also denied this path.)

They would also fail to discuss how the portrayal of our region as “backwards, violent, and ignorant” allowed the exploitation to continue with outsiders alternating between reviling us and sending mission trips, all while our parents and grandparents and great-grandparents mined the coal that made the steel that literally built this country. 

This is a photo of some scrip that my daddy saved from the SECO mine in Letcher County, Kentucky. While my dad got paid in actual money, up until a few years before I was born, many mines paid with this “company money”. Scrip kept the miners dependent on the company store and effectively made them unable to participate in any economy beyond that of the company itself.

Additionally, miners and their families frequently lived in “company houses” and did not have access to the number-one way that most families in the US have built generational wealth–home ownership. My dad worked for Southeast Coal until they laid him off (and many others) right before he would have been eligible for his pension. It would have been a disaster for our family no matter what, but the fact that we also lived in a company house meant that not only did dad have to find a new job, but we had to find somewhere else to live. 

I was only 12 and my dad protected me from the worst of his anxieties, but it spilled over once when he confessed to me in an anguished voice that he wished he’d been able to buy us a house. 

This photo is of the house I grew up in, which was right next to the deep mine. For better or worse, our lives were shaped by the rhythms of the mine–the coal dust coating everything, the shift-changes when the miners would walk through our yard to get to the parking lot, the creek which was coated in orange run-off from the mine, our well-water which turned everything yellow due to the minerals, and the coal trucks barrelling down the roads night and day. You can see my Granny looking off toward the coal tipple visible from our stoop. 

Thanks for letting me share about my home–the beauty AND the challenges. Our place is often misunderstood, and there are many from elsewhere who try to tell our stories for us. Kentucky is a gorgeous and complex place to be from, and it’s time to listen to her people and uplift their stories over the explanations and mischaracterizations of folks who didn’t grow up here and whose perspectives are often motivated by political agendas. The injustices of the past are still echoing and affecting us today, as our region grapples with the opioid crisis, lack of viable employment, health issues caused by irresponsible mining and mountaintop removal practices, internet unavailability, and crumbling infrastructure.

If you’d like, you can listen to a song I wrote about the struggles of deciding to leave or stay in a place where opportunities are diminishing.

What truths do you wish the world knew about Appalachia?