Saturday Review: “Timely Portrayals of a Place” a review by Elaine Thomas forthcoming in NCLR Online Fall 2024 of David Joy’s Those We Thought We Knew and C.L. Willis’s Hillbilly Odyssey: Resilience in a Small Mountain Mill Town.
Elaine Thomas examines the multifaceted conception of Appalachia David Joy’s new novel and C.L. Willis’s memoir. She writes that these books “give us particularly timely examinations not only of a specific Appalachian area, but also of broader American divisions and tensions. David Joy’s Those We Thought We Knew and C.L. Willis’s Hillbilly Odyssey are set in rural communities located only a half hour or so apart.”
While C.L. Willis’s Hillbilly Odyssey “confronts the portrayal of Appalachia and its people in J.D. Vance’s Hillbilly Elegy” Thomas clarifies, “In the heat of a political season, let’s be absolutely clear: neither of these books address party politics, much less our upcoming election. But they do raise timely questions that illuminate underlying differences in how individuals understand power and community.” Thomas notes that the publication of Hillbilly Odyssey preceded Vance’s 2024 Republican vice-presidential nomination.
“Joy’s story may be fictional, but both authors draw on lived experience within their communities. The settings are real and the descriptions precise. The particular sheds light on the universal. Both demonstrate awareness of the greater human condition in all its complexities, good and bad. Both examine the damage done when people view themselves as set apart from, and somehow more deserving than, others.”
Read the entire review here while awaiting the release of the Fall 2024 issue later this month. Order a copy of Those We Thought We Knew from Penguin Random House and Hillbilly Odyssey: Resilience in a Small Mountain Mill Town from Redhawk Publications or from your local independent bookstore.
Our thoughts are in Appalachia as those in Western North Carolina recover from Hurricane Helene’s destruction. Consider donating to disaster relief efforts to aid those impacted by the hurricane’s aftermath.
