By Justine Trinh
Due to the 2024 presidential election, there has been renewed interest in JD Vance’s 2016 memoir, Hillbilly Elegy. His memoir made broad generalizations about the region and poverty of Appalachia that was based on his personal upbringing growing up in Middletown, Ohio, a suburb of Cinicinnati. However, due to its popularity and later movie adaptation directed by Ron Howard, Hillbilly Elegy and Vance’s portrayal of Appalachia became the dominant narrative and consequently erased other experiences.
Neema Avashia portrays a different Appalachia from Vance in her memoir, Another Appalachia. As a queer South Asian woman, her experience in West Virginia differs from the dominant white narrative as she examines her identity and navigates her belonging in relation to Appalachia. As one of the few South Asians who grew up in the predominantly white area, Avashia “fits few Appalachian stereotypes,” but she still identifies as an Appalachian woman. Through an exploration of food, ideas of shame, gun control, and more, Avashia reconciles the nostalgia for the place in which she grew up with the complexity Appalachia presents that she experiences as an adult. Yet despite these complicated tensions and feelings, she still regards West Virginia as her home, and she digs into these conflicts in Another Appalachia.
Avashia carefully navigates the discussion of politics and race in a turbulent United States specifically in relation to Mr. B, her white grandfather figure within the United States. Growing up, Mr. B and his wife provided Avashia with emotional support as she grew up far away from her own grandparents. While she still cares for her surrogate grandfather, she is bothered by his Facebook posts that denounce immigration. While it is easy to dismiss those who do not share our political values, Avashia makes a conscious choice to understand why someone she cares about would post something that takes a stance against people like her parents, as they are immigrants too. She reminds us of the truth of Carol Hanish’s words “The personal is political” as she recognizes Mr. B’s values are informed by his own identity. Mr. B remembers a time in which Appalachia was thriving and wants it to go back to how it used to be, despite the impossibility of that. Thus, certain political promises resonate more to Mr. B’s desires “in a way that do[es]n’t for [Avashia]” and “do not negate Mr. B’s existence in a way that negates [her] or [her] family’s.” In this singular chapter, Avashia provides a multifaceted understanding of someone who she cares about but also holds political values that threaten someone like her.
Another Appalachia also explores and parses the complex concept of identity. Avashia admits, “In truth, I’ve always felt uneasy in my relationship to the word, ‘Appalachian.’” Throughout the whole book, she discusses what it is like to grow up in West Virginia outside the norm, such as when she mentions how she was made to feel like an outsider based on her Indian background. When speaking about foodways, she talks about how “those thirty-year-old cafeteria conversations still make [her] sensitive to negative comments about Indian food’s smell or appearance” and those feelings never disappear. While spices such as turmeric and chaat masala are common within an Indian household, they are made foreign by the stares of school children who view them as hazardous. Despite these “outsider” markers placed upon her by race and ethnicity, she still spent her formative years in Appalachia, learning to play the guitar by playing Appalachia folk songs and learning to speak English with a Southern twang. For Avashia, her identity is intertwined with Appalachia as she states, “the culture of Appalachia was the only culture I knew growing up, outside my parents’ culture. To me, being Appalachian meant being American. My Americanness was tied up in my Appalachianness. The more I asserted the latter, the more I became the former.” Identity is not one or the other as she shows us as she embraces both Appalachian and Indian culture together without compromising either.
Another Appalachia is poignant in its portrayal of a complicated place that is riddled with contradictions in a politically turbulent time and its exploration of these complex feelings. Avashia does not hold back on both the good and the bad that both Appalachia and her Indian culture have to offer, and she provides a sincere representation that is both critical and tinged with nostalgia. She holds the problematic behaviors accountable such as when she brings up Mr. B’s hurtful Facebook posts or her aunt’s contradictory approach on shame while simultaneously providing an explanation for these actions. While these acts can be frustrating, Avashia makes an effort to empathize with those who do not agree with her, and I really appreciated Avashia’s willingness to be vulnerable when discussing these moments. While Avashia is part of a minority of South Asian Americans who grew up in Appalachia, her memoir is just as important and essential as it provides a different perspective than the dominant societal narrative and makes sure that stories like hers do not get erased by heteronormative systems.
Justine Trinh is an English literature Ph.D. student at Washington State University. She graduated from the University of California, Irvine with B.A.s in Asian American studies and classical civilizations and a B.S. in mathematics. She then went on to earn her M.A. in Asian American studies, making her the first student to graduate from UCI Asian American Studies’ 4+1 B.A./M.A. program. Her research interests include Asian American literature, critical refugee studies, family and trauma, and forced departure and disownment.