I always cringe when I read a novel or see a movie
that romanticizes poverty in the southern mountains – the noble
people of Appalachia, speaking an arcane dialect, whipping up nifty herbal
remedies when a family member falls ill, sitting around a fire in the
evenings, strumming their dulcimers and singing 400-year-old folk songs.
Even worse is the notion that all mountain people are dimwitted products
of incest and the civilized world would be horrified to learn what really
goes on back in the hollows and up on the ridges.
The years I worked in West Virginia as a newspaper reporter taught me that
even the poorest residents of the mountains are more or less the same as
everybody else, with the same interests and aspirations. They watch TV
and know all about the “outside” world. Many have been to war
in foreign countries. Few are content to be poor. Although they may love
the mountains and feel reluctant to leave home and family to work elsewhere,
they don’t revel in poverty and scorn all opportunity. When kids
get sick, parents take them to a doctor – if they can find a free
clinic or scrape together enough money to pay the bill. They’re more
likely to enjoy country music or rock than ballads that were popular when
Henry VIII was on the throne. They may be uneducated, but stupidity is
no more prevalent than in any other economic class. I’ve also never
seen any evidence that incest and mental retardation are more common than
in the general population. Sadly, drug use is a massive problem, and methamphetamine
production provides an income for many who would otherwise be unemployed.
The first time I used southern mountain people in a (never published) novel,
years ago, I realized that a lot of people see them through a distorted
lens and expect writers to present stereotypes. A critique partner told
me I had to find a way to show that “all mountain women speak in
high-pitched, whiny voices.” Another critiquer asked, “Why
don’t you have them all speaking the mountain dialect, with Old English
and Scottish words mixed in?” The same person expressed satisfaction
that the antipoverty program on the late 1960s and early 1970s had failed,
because if it had succeeded in improving people’s lives economically
it would have “destroyed their unique culture.”
Later on, when I decided to set my mystery novels in the mountains of southwestern
Virginia, where poverty is rampant, I vowed that I would ignore that kind
of criticism and try to see the region and its people through an undistorted
lens. I can’t ignore the drug addiction, or the depressed economy
that has decimated the population by forcing people to move elsewhere in
a search for work, or the landscape that’s being ravaged by surface
mining. My challenge is to tell a good story that will make readers accept
the less than idyllic setting.
I refuse to romanticize the people, and I won’t go the other way
and make them all look like idiots. Some of my low-income characters, like
Rachel Goddard’s young friend Holly Turner, are smart, honest, and
hard-working. Others, like a few of Holly’s relatives, see selling
illegal drugs as their ticket to a cushier life. Some of my poor mountain
characters have been villains, and others have been heroes. One woman,
Lily Barker, claims to have “the sight” – a mountain
version of psychic powers – but I leave it up to readers to decide
whether her abilities are real or imagined.
I know some readers will always want my mountain people to talk in dialect,
sing old English ballads, and tell colorful tales about life in the hills.
Maybe I’d have a wider readership if I presented stereotypes. But
my characters are what they are, and I would feel I had betrayed them if
I depicted them as cartoonish happy savages.
I hope my characters will come alive on the page, and that readers will
appreciate them for what they are.
Sandy
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