“West Virginia” is never what people are looking for when they ask where my family is from.  

The first week of January, my dad and I drove five hours from our house in North Carolina to visit his hometown of Charleston, West Virginia, for a family friend’s memorial service. We drove the same route we’d taken many times during my childhood, up through Greensboro, stopping in Wytheville and Beckley.

I was not born in Charleston…