<div>An antidote to bigotry and a &ldquo;perfect primer for readers seeking factual, realistic portrayals of the rural and working-class experience&rdquo; (Los Angeles Times). In 2016, headlines declared Appalachia ground zero for America&rsquo;s &ldquo;forgotten tribe&rdquo; of white working-class voters. Journalists flocked to the region to extract sympathetic profiles of families devastated by poverty, abandoned by establishment politics, and eager to consume cheap campaign promises. What You Are Getting Wrong About Appalachia is a frank assessment of America&rsquo;s recent fascination with the people and problems of the region. The book analyzes trends in contemporary writing on Appalachia, presents a brief history of Appalachia with an eye toward unpacking stereotypes, and provides examples of writing, art, and policy created by Appalachians as opposed to for Appalachians&mdash;ultimately offering a much-needed insider&rsquo;s perspective on the region. &ldquo;The most damning critique of Hillbilly Elegy.&rdquo; &mdash;New York Review of Books &ldquo;Succeeds in providing a richer, more complex view.&rdquo; &mdash;Publishers Weekly &ldquo;A necessary response to the bigotry against a much-maligned culture.&rdquo; &mdash;Chris Offutt, award-winning author of Code of the Hills</div>

What You Are Getting Wrong About Appalachia

<div>&ldquo;A well-told, richly contextualized investigation of an appalling episode in American history&rdquo; (Kirkus Reviews, starred review). Between 1927 and 1979, more than 8,000 people were involuntarily sterilized in five hospitals across the state of Virginia. From this plain and terrible fact springs Elizabeth Catte&rsquo;s Pure America, a sweeping, unsparing history of eugenics in Virginia, and by extension the United States. Virginia&rsquo;s eugenics program was not the misguided initiative of well-meaning men of the day, writes Catte, it was a manifestation of white supremacy. It was a form of employment insurance. It was a means of controlling &ldquo;troublesome&rdquo; women and a philosophy that helped remove poor people from valuable land. It was cruel and it was wrong. As was amply evidenced by her acclaimed 2018 book What You Are Getting Wrong About Appalachia, Catte has no room for excuses; no patience for equivocation. What does it mean for modern America, she asks here, that such buildings are given the second chance that 8,000 citizens never got? &ldquo;Riveting and tightly argued,&rdquo; Pure America is another necessary corrective to the historical record, a must-read for anyone concerned with how to repair its damage (The Wall Street Journal). A Publishers Weekly Best Book of 2021Longlisted for the 2022 PEN America John Kenneth Galbraith Award for Nonfiction</div>

Elizabeth Catte
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Books By Elizabeth Catte (2 Books)

What You Are Getting Wrong About Appalachia

Pure America

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