Melanie Kramer-Torok

“I don't give a damn about geography, but I'll note that Vance has transcended one of the most authentically Appalachian experiences of them all: watching someone with tired ideas about race and culture get famous by selling cheap stereotypes abou the region.”
― Elizabeth Catte, What You Are Getting Wrong about Appalachia

“Women endure because we aren’t given any other choice.”
― Amanda Lovelace, The Witch Doesn't Burn in This One

“How did journalists and correspondents for the New York Times as well as scholars not catch these acts of generalizing and aggrandizing on behalf of elite readers?” she asks. “How did we trade in the breadth of diversity the region has to offer for one view? While reading Hillbilly Elegy I thought, here is how. This is how places and people become caricatures of themselves, ourselves.”
― Elizabeth Catte, What You Are Getting Wrong About Appalachia

“Using Appalachians to fill made-to-order constituencies, anchored by race, is a tired game. Social upheaval, from the Civil War to the civil rights movement, often triggered, and still does, a larger fascination with Appalachia. These projections do a disservice to both Appalachians and other economically and socially disadvantaged groups by pitting their concerns against on another instead of connecting them.”
― Elizabeth Catte