A review by drollgorg
Making Our Future: Visionary Folklore and Everyday Culture in Appalachia by Emily Hilliard

informative inspiring reflective slow-paced

2.75

Normally I wouldn't let the dry, academic tone of a book affect my rating of it when I'm reading, well, an academic work. However, I take Emily Hilliard at her word when she tells me that this book is intended for general and not just academic audiences and that it's an exercise in creative nonfiction. The information contained within is interesting, and I certainly felt like my understanding of and sense of West Virginia as a place has been expanded. Along with my complaints about the dryness of the text though, I'm rather unconvinced of the revolutionary potential that Hilliard sees in West Virginian folkways- the Mine Wars were a century ago, no matter how actively and creatively the hillfolk have negotiated the transmission of everyday life and traditions, they have clearly grown more and more captured by reactionary politics, and the creative culture of wrestling or teacher's strikes has failed to translate into any kind of understanding of material politics. Perhaps the potential is there, but we've seen that resentment of the other over the lack of prosperity is the baked-in political impulse of the Rust Belt.