Welcome to Embracing Appalachia: Dispatches from a Once Reluctant Daughter

Let’s get something straight: I didn’t always love where I’m from.

I’m a historian originally from West Virginia who once spent an embarrassing amount of time pretending I was from "just outside D.C." (it was not just outside D.C.). But Appalachia, with its messy beauty, stubborn contradictions, and wild heart, has a way of tugging you home—especially when you start asking the right questions.

This is a place for anyone curious about the deeper, richer, more rebellious Appalachia that doesn’t make it onto postcards or pity-porn documentaries. Yes, we’ve got banjos and biscuits—but we’ve also got Black coal miners who unionized under threat of death, Native peoples whose stories still shape these hills, Latina women leading community resistance, Asian shopkeepers who kept towns alive, and Appalachian women who could crush patriarchy before breakfast (and often did).

This isn’t the version of the mountains you were taught in school. This is the Appalachia of labor strikes, mutual aid, jazz clubs, and migration routes. This is the region that birthed radical organizers, feminist foremothers, queer community builders, and more than a few immigrants who turned "hillbilly" into high art.

So come along for dispatches from a region I once tried to escape and now can’t stop researching, writing about, and—yes—loving. I promise to bring historical grit, critical insight, and just the right amount of humor.