I am from Appalachia — a native of Webster Springs, West Virginia, a graduate of WVU and West Virginia Wesleyan — a poet, a writer and an engineer. My father’s side of the family traces their roots to Burnsville and Cabin Creek, WV. My mother’s side of the family, however, hails from the small Caribbean island of Grenada. So between his memoir, Hillbilly Elegy, and his recent vitriolic comments about Haitian migrants, who like my ancestors come from the Caribbean, JD Vance has managed to either stereotype or demonize many aspects about my identity.
When I read Hillbilly Elegy in 2020 as a part of my studies at West Virginia Wesleyan, what I’d originally hoped to encounter was a story of advocacy for our region: one that is vibrant and able, but facing systemically perpetuated issues. Instead, what he presented was a portrait of Appalachia as a “hub of misery”: our homes drug-addled and broken; young people from both his generation and mine, lazy; all of us pessimistic about the future. I didn’t see people like me: Appalachians who grew up in close-knit communities, thrived thanks to family and educators in the region and “made it” here due to their support.
Similar to Vance, I was raised by my grandparents in Webster from the time I was seven years old. But unlike Vance, my family situation didn’t stem from drug abuse, but was instead the result of my mother passing due to an aneurysm after my birth and my father being enlisted in the Navy.
“My own story is a counterexample to Vance: other Appalachians can make it. Appalachians of color like me exist and are making it.”
— Torli bush
Here, I had a stable home and it was an incredible privilege to have the amount of love and support that I did. My dad’s parents, James and Xanna Bush, were both from working class families. They got to a good place because my grandpa had followed work in unionized coal mines, even going nearly three hours away to Welch when he had to. Both of them wanted better for me, and while they knew college wasn’t the only way to success, they believed it was the best shot they could give me.
Vance’s family believed in education, too; for him, it came after serving in the U.S. Marine Corps and eventually led him to Yale Law School. I stayed closer to home, graduating from West Virginia University with a bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering and an MFA in Poetry from West Virginia Wesleyan College.
In his narrative, Vance’s vision of achievement falls into the mentality of rugged individualism and pulling oneself upward to attain a lucrative career, in his case, landing among the billionaire technocrats of Silicon Valley. He might define this as “making it.” My own perspective of what “making it” means in Appalachia turns this on its head; we would not be able to “make it” without the support of others — not due to any weakness on our part, but because we have learned that leaning on community is the key to sustaining ourselves and having a meaningful life.
I owe all my successes to other people from West Virginia, be that my grandparents who raised me or my many teachers who also got their education in the region. There is so much talent here: the foundations of mathematics and physics I learned in high school from John McElwain (Berea College), Dan Cutlip (West Virginia University), and Charles Toumazous (Glenville State College) gave me a base to pursue mechanical engineering. The Morgantown Poets and the Pittsburgh Poetry Collective got me into the Steel City Slam poetry scene. And the mentorship of the late Joseph Limer, who had roots in Clarksburg, set me on the path that would lead me to attending West Virginia Wesleyan for my master’s degree under the guidance of Doug Van Gundy, Mary Carrol-Hacket and Diane Gilliam. Now, my debut collection, Requiem for a Redbird, is set to release with Pulley Press out of Seattle on October 1, 2024.
Vance’s narrative amplifies his own achievements and uses his individual story as a prism for everyone else in an area spanning from New York to Mississippi, including the entirety of my home state. His attempt to look at Appalachia through a white-only lens diminishes our cultural richness and dilutes a complicated history to a monomythic cycle of poor whites who only experience tragedies; in his projections, the fault of those tragedies is also squarely upon their own shoulders, despite any institutional problems, because to him they are simply trapped in a nihilistic mindset.
My own story is a counterexample to Vance: other Appalachians can make it. Appalachians of color like me exist and are making it. This is my story of continuing to be here in West Virginia, but the real pride of all this is knowing I’m not alone. Several people from Webster County with a variety of backgrounds that graduated before me, with me, and after me have gone on to pursue meaningful careers or studies in areas ranging from health care and education to the arts, trades, and athletics.
This is just what I can give as a quick example from one county in the center of Appalachia. It’s my hope that knowing there are people fighting for this region and holding lives here rooted in all its complexity opens up your curiosity to read beyond Vance’s “elegy.” We are a people very much alive.
Suggested reading:
Appalachian Reckoning: A Region Responds to Hillbilly Elegy,
Eyes Glowing at the Edge of the Woods: Fiction and Poetry from West Virginia,
This article was originally published by 100 Days in Appalachia, a nonprofit, collaborative newsroom telling the complex stories of the region that deserve to be heard. Sign up for their weekly newsletter here.
