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Most people don’t pronounce Appalachia correctly, and that’s a problem, says author Barbara Kingsolver. The Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist grew up, lives in, and often writes about the region. Still, people frequently correct how she says it. (Hint: It’s App-Uh-Lach-Uh not App-Uh-Lay-Shuh).
For Kingsolver, this speaks to how outsiders, particularly those from urban areas, often misunderstand and look down on Appalachians. “If we are represented, it’s somebody else talking about us, portraying us, without an understanding of who we are. … When Appalachians see ourselves in a television show or in a movie, we brace ourselves, because it’s going to be insulting.”
Appalachians value self-sufficiency, she adds, which affects their view of philanthropy. “We don’t want charity. We don’t want someone to come from the outside and save us. Because the imbalance of power in that is so frustrating and aggravating, and the things an outsider comes to hand out are likely to be the wrong things.”
For nonprofits, the solution lies in listening, she says. “If you want to help the people in a region of the country that’s different from yours, you need to learn about them first. You need to give them a chance to represent themselves.”
In an interview with Chronicle deputy opinion editor Nandita Raghuram, Kingsolver discussed the origins of this urban-rural power imbalance and philanthropy’s contribution to it. She also discussed her journey to start a nonprofit — a home for women recovering from addiction.
Listen to the conversation on Apple, Spotify, or anywhere you get your podcasts. Or watch the discussion on the Chronicle of Philanthropy’s YouTube channel. Below are some conversation highlights.
You can also watch previous Commons in Conversation interviews.
Interview Excerpts
“The resentment that rural people feel has come to a boiling point, and it’s become very dangerous. It has had very disastrous effects on our political life and on our government. When people feel so abandoned, they’re ready to just vote for the guy who says, ‘I’m going to blow up the system,’ which is a really dangerous thing to do.”
“I’ve always had a sense of interconnectedness, and how foolish it is to imagine that you are separate from those around and behind you. … This interest in interdependency, and in acknowledging community comes from my background in biology. It comes from being a woman, and it comes from being an American and seeing the damage done by these myths of the self-made person, which actually end up causing a lot of shame. If you can’t get ahead, then you think, ‘Something must be wrong with me.’ Because in America, we’re all supposed to be able to get ahead. And then ultimately, I’ve realized it comes from being Appalachian. Because if we have one defining feature here, we are people made of community. We belong to our families and to our communities.”
“These rural-urban divides have become more dangerously extreme. I think the control of our media has become more concentrated in urban places and concerned with urban things, which has made everything worse. We’re feeling even more invisible than we used to. Fifty years ago, there were television programs about farmers and about people in small towns, which don’t exist anymore. Such a thing would be considered very old fashioned and quaint now, unsophisticated. So I think the divisions have gotten harder and wider, and there’s a lot more anger, which is playing out in really dangerous ways in our government.”
“What we can all be conscious of when we want to help someone else is — instead of assuming we know the solution — to ask rather than tell. I think the best projects are those that begin in a community with a conversation inside a community. … The best solutions are going to come out of those conversations rather than a conversation 100 or 1,000 miles away in a room among people who don’t really live the problem themselves.”
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