The Nation — October 30, 2017

The Nation. 29

an example: “They have these big pods, and they were

selected and grown because they have the most protein.

People can dry them and then, in the middle of winter,

cook them so they taste like smoked meat. I

mean, that’s pretty ingenious.” The lazy-hillbilly

stereotype doesn’t survive scrutiny of the foods

that hillbillies invented.

Appalachian food is also far more culturally

diverse than people realize, Lundy says. Its in-

fluences reflect not just an influx of European

settlers—the famous Scotch-Irish in addition

to Italians, French Huguenots, and others—but

also Native American and African diets. This di-

versity loops back to coal, too, as so many Appa-

lachian stories seem to do. “The story was that,

once the miners began to strike and to ask for

better wages and conditions,” Lundy explains,

“instead of meeting those demands, the coal-

mine owners recruited foreign miners to come in. As the

agitation continued, they brought in more and more peo-

ple.” If you need evidence to reject the myth of a mono-

lithically white Appalachia, you don’t need to look much

further than its food. Nor is it much of a coincidence that

class conflict—warfare, really—shaped the same cuisine.

lundy is careful to note that appalachian food-

ways never disappeared. The same currents that gave

Appalachian food its depth and variety also threatened

Coal miners’ daughters: The children of

miners at the Kingston Pocahontas Coal

Company’s Big Sandy Housing Camp,

McDowell County, West Virginia, 1946.

A

ppalachia is where the white trash lives, or so the stereotype goes.

Ask the average outsider what Appalachians eat, and they may deliver

a similar answer: trash. McNuggets, maybe, or lots of bacon and gravy.

Heart-attack food. People choose the stories that they want to believe,

and the myth of the dumb, fat hillbilly is an old and popular one.

“The term ‘white trash’ is class disparagement due to economics,” the author and

East Kentucky native Chris Offutt wrote in a 2015 essay for the Oxford American. “I

am trash because of where I’m from. I am trash because of where I shop. I am trash

because of what I eat.” If people are trash, their food must be, too.

INE

But the story of Appalachian food, like Appalachia

itself, is a complicated one. Advocates say that both are

entering a new, more optimistic era; that a resurgence

in local farming, coupled with renewed inter-

est in traditional Appalachian foodways, could

help steer the region toward an environmentally

and economically sustainable post-coal future.

And unlike the historical attempts to develop

Appalachia—imposed principally by external

actors, both public and private—food and farm-

ing are located well within the region’s own his-

tory of political resistance.

“When the company thugs came in to throw

an agitating or striking coal miner out of their

house, they destroyed the gardens and confis-

cated or killed the animals that provide food,”

notes Ronni Lundy, the author of Victuals: An

Appalachian Journey, With Recipes. “You know,

they got it—the ability to grow food is power in the

hands of people they wanted to make powerless.”

And it remains a source of power, say the advocates

behind Appalachia’s food renaissance.

“what makes us unique is that we do have a strong

food culture here,” says Lora Smith, co-founder of the

Appalachian Food Summit. “There are things that are

produced in Appalachian crops that aren’t necessarily

produced anywhere else.”

From shucky beans to pickled corn and kilt lettuce,

Appalachian food reflects dual realities: poverty and in-

genuity. Appalachia is a large region spanning 13 states,

according to the Appalachian Regional Commission’s

definition, and the amount of arable land varies widely

among them. In the southern Appalachians, where the

mountains widen out and soften into valleys and fields,

larger-scale farming is possible. In the coal fields, how-

ever, arable land shrinks, restricting the inhabitants to

small-scale farms and grazing livestock. Factor in a sharp

winter, which the southern low country mostly lacks, and

the specific character of Appalachian

foodways begins to make sense. It’s

heavy on beans and grains, and greens

that can be foraged or grown in sus-

tenance gardens. Pig products feature

heavily, because pigs are relatively

easy to raise in the mountains.

To survive harsh winters and harsh-

er topographies, Appalachians learned

to adapt. Smith cites shucky beans as

The lazy-

hillbilly

stereotype

doesn’t

survive

scrutiny of

the foods

that hillbillies

invented.

Foodways: From

left to right, the

ingredients for kilt

lettuce (green onions

and lettuce leaves);

picking grapes for

jelly in western North

Carolina; making

canned sweet

apples; and a plate of

homemade cornbread.

FROM TOP LEFT: NATIONAL ARCHIVES; TIPPER PRESSLEY (4); NATIONAL ARCHIVES