Dear Appalachia: Readers, Identity, and Popular Fiction since 1878
"Winner of the Weatherford Award for 2011" --""An important new contribution to our understanding of the creation and survival of the idea of Appalachia in the popular mind. Based primarily on a careful reading of fan mail and an impressive grasp of the scholarly literature, Dear Appalachia provides critical and fresh perspective on the politics of American identity." -- Ronald D Eller, author of Uneven Ground: Appalachia since 1945" --""Dear Appalachia undertakes an important and needed project: to explore the cultural work that fiction set in Appalachia is doing for its varied readers. Satterwhite's scrupulous analysis of those readers' reactions offers provocative insights into the identity dynamics of white Americans." -- Chris Green, author of The Social Life of Poetry: Appalachia, Race, and Radical Modernism" --""Dear Appalachia goes beyond an explanation of how people view the region to tackle the question of why people think they way they do [and] traces the changing representations of the region across the decades."--Morgon Messenger" --""Satterwhite takes a look at how this area has been so variously portrayed in literature over the years, going far beyond just what readers and writers have decided, but why they have come to these conclusions and stereotypical viewpoints."--Knoxville News Sentinel" --""The 'dear' in the title captures a duality--the critical spirit and the epistolary methodology of Satterwhite's study of the roles of popular literature in and of Appalachia and its effects on readers."--Choice" --""In an innovative approach to research, Satterwhite analyzed authors' fan mail and readers' Internet reviews of popular fiction to learn about attitudes toward Appalachia."--Nuevo" --"Winner of the Phi Beta Kappa Sturm Award" --""Satterwhite's analysis offers a persuasive study on the identity politics and geographical dynamics of white American readers who have responded to works of popular Appalachian fiction." -- Marianne Worthington, The Journal of East Tennessee History" --""It is as innovative and creative a treatment of Appalachia as a social construct as any I know, and a prime example of the rich rewards inherent in the cross-disciplinary approach that continues to characterize so much of the best scholarship in Appalachian studies." -- John C. Inscoe, The Journal of Southern History" --""This is one of the most important books on Appalachian and American identity the Appalachian studies field has produced." -- Rodger Cunningham, Journal of Appalachian Studies" --""Dear Appalchia advaces our understnading of how Appalachia continues to be a created and malleable concept that serves the political and identity needs of the American public." -- Mark A. Roberts, West Virginia History" --