What we get wrong about Appalachia

Summary

Podcast Summary: "What we get wrong about Appalachia"

Podcast: Settle In with PBS News
Episode Date: July 28, 2026
Host: PBS News
Guest: Emily Hackney, author of All That's Unseen: An Appalachian Memoir

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Episode Overview

This episode features an intimate conversation with Emily Hackney, whose debut memoir explores her upbringing in Tazewell, southwestern Virginia, and her journey from a tight-knit Appalachian community to Harvard University. The discussion aims to challenge pervasive stereotypes about Appalachia, delving into themes of poverty, faith, family, belonging, and the complexities of leaving—and being viewed as having left—home. Hackney's story reveals the nuanced, lived realities behind the region too often flattened into cliché, offering a personal portrait of struggle, identity, and resilience.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Confronting Appalachian Stereotypes

• Stereotyping and Outsider Projections: Emily describes her shock when first encountering outsider assumptions after leaving home, particularly at Harvard, where questions like "Did you vote for Trump?" and "Have you ever shot a gun?" were asked bluntly (00:32, 25:03).
• Quote: “In everybody’s mind’s eye, Appalachia is full of people who are very poor, very white, very drug addicted, very Republican... it was disappointing to know that there is such a flat, singular image... projected onto me.” – Emily Hackney (02:01)
• Emphasizes that while elements of the stereotype exist, the reality is much more nuanced.

2. Life in Tazewell: Pace, Storytelling, and Connection

• Living in a Small Appalachian Town: Emily shares memories of a peaceful, insular community where "not often people leave, and if they do, they don't usually come back" (03:11).
• Appalachian Storytelling: Family stories—ranging from tall tales about monsters to coal mining legends—instilled a sense of mystery and creativity, fueling her later writing ambitions (04:43).
• Quote: “I guess the stories always made me feel like Appalachia was kind of haunted and wild and there was a lot about it that couldn’t be known.” – Emily Hackney (04:43)

3. Childhood Poverty, Wealth, and Shame

• Family Finances & Insecurity: Emily recounts moments when her parents needed to take her birthday or piggy bank savings just to keep food on the table or pay the mortgage (06:15).
• The experience bred persistent financial anxiety, “a sense of instability… [that] I don’t know if I can overcome” (06:43, 07:30).
• Shame in Relative Wealth: After her father’s job change, the family was sometimes judged for having more, experiencing “the shame of being rich” in a community where most were on the economic margins (08:14).

4. Faith, Gender Roles, and Church Culture

• Church as Social Anchor: Raised Pentecostal, Emily’s upbringing was steeped in fundamentalist Christianity masked by contemporary trappings (09:30).
• Subtle Gender Messaging: She absorbed the belief that "men were wiser than women, that they had an innate authority" (11:05), which contributed to dynamics in her adolescent relationship.
• Domestic Discipline: Emily discusses “domestic discipline”—an ideology taught by a guest evangelist, in which husbands physically discipline wives—how it was embraced in her unhealthy teenage engagement (13:03).

5. Breaking Away: Relationships, Mental Health, and Leaving Home

• Toxic Relationship & Turning Point: Plans to marry her older fiancé, Sam, ended abruptly when he was arrested; Emily reflects on the lack of support for leaving him and her church (16:42).
• Mental Health Struggles: Deep depression and suicidal ideation followed; attempts to access local mental health services were thwarted, reinforcing feelings of hopelessness (19:48, 21:20).
• Moving Forward: The need for escape, and inspiration from seeing others "leave and never come back," prompted her to apply to college, despite the local stigma for those who left (16:42, 18:34).

6. From Tazewell to Harvard: Culture Shock & Identity

• Harvard Application as Rebellion: Applying “out of spite” after her breakup, Emily was shocked to be accepted and felt out of place among the elite student body (22:46, 24:25).
• Alienation and Exoticization: Her accent and background made her the subject of stereotyping and ignorant questions, reinforcing her sense of outsider status (25:03).
• Quote: “They didn’t really see me as a person, they just saw the accent and the associations that they made...” – Emily Hackney (26:24)

7. Solitude, Self-Destruction, and Writing as Refuge

• Struggles with Belonging: Social isolation led Emily to destructive coping mechanisms, including transactional sex, as she searched for comfort and escape (27:35).
• Writing as Salvation: Creative writing, especially personal essays about home, became a lifeline, eventually serving as the foundation for her memoir (28:34, 29:24).

8. Politics, Identity, and Media Representation

• Appalachia and Trump: Emily contextualizes Appalachian support for Trump as rooted in a sense of abandonment: “He makes us feel seen for the first time in decades” (30:16).
• Changing Perspectives: Attendance at a Trump rally shifted her feelings, but conflicting loyalties to “home” complicated her stance (31:00).
• On Hillbilly Elegy Comparisons: She critiques J.D. Vance’s work as overly generalized and flattening the region’s complexity: “He cannot speak for Appalachia as a whole as he does in his book.” (32:28, 34:10).

9. What’s Unseen in Appalachia

• The memoir’s title, All That’s Unseen, speaks to the depth and diversity in Appalachian life that outsiders miss. Emily emphasizes her story is exceptional and not representative of everyone’s reality (34:43).

10. Family, Loss, and Moving Forward

• Losing Her Father & Hiking the Appalachian Trail: After her father's sudden death, Emily hiked the entire Appalachian Trail (5.5 months, 2,200 miles) to work through her grief and honor their shared dream (35:39).
• Motherhood & Perspective: As a new parent, she views her own upbringing differently, with more empathy toward her parents’ struggles (38:26).

11. The Complicated Relationship with Home

• Emily expresses enduring love for Appalachia but acknowledges she may never return permanently—wanting broader opportunities and exposure for her child, and feeling politically and culturally out of step with much of the region (39:43, 40:46).
• Quote: “Even with time and distance, I feel like my relationship… [is] still pretty similar. It's complicated. It's a place that I love so dearly... But at the same time, it's a difficult place for me to live... I still feel that feeling of not getting everything I want from it.” (39:43)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Stereotypes at Harvard:
  “People felt comfortable saying those to me, I guess because of the idea they had in their head of what Appalachian is like and what an Appalachian is.” – Emily Hackney (00:32 / 25:03)

• On Poverty & Insecurity:
  “There’s always this sense of things could fall apart at any moment... I don’t know if that ever will leave me.” – Emily Hackney (06:43 / 07:30)

• On Gender and Faith:
  “I grew to believe that men were wiser than women, that they had an Innate authority and wisdom that women didn’t have. And therefore, they should lead women.” – Emily Hackney (11:05)

• On Domestic Discipline:
  “[It was] a dynamic in which the husband disciplines his wife physically, and that manifested as spanking... It’s just a way to make her a little fearful, not just of sinning, but of her husband.” – Emily Hackney (13:03)

• On Leaving Appalachia:
  “Anybody that left… they don’t belong here anymore… we didn’t want them here anyway.” (18:34)

• On Writing as Comfort:
  “Writing about my life in Appalachia… became my comfort. That was a way for me to start to feel some sense of belonging…” (28:34)

• On Hillbilly Elegy:
  “I feel like that’s a flattened and non-nuanced characterization of Appalachia… He cannot speak for Appalachia as a whole as he does in his book.” (32:28)

• On Home:
  “I just, like I said, I feel it deeply in my bones and I love it… But at the same time… I still feel that feeling of not getting everything I want from it.” (39:43)

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Timestamps for Significant Segments

• Introduction & Stereotypes Faced: 00:32 – 02:01
• Life in Tazewell, Appalachian Storytelling: 03:04 – 04:43
• Poverty, Wealth, and Shame: 06:15 – 08:14
• Faith & Gender Roles in the Church: 09:30 – 13:03
• Relationship with Sam, Breaking Away: 14:10 – 16:42
• Mental Health Journey & Systems Failure: 19:48 – 21:20
• Applying to and Arriving at Harvard: 22:46 – 25:03
• Outsider Status at Harvard: 25:03 – 26:24
• Writing as Sanctuary: 28:34 – 29:24
• Trump, Politics, and Representation: 29:41 – 32:28
• On Hillbilly Elegy & Representation: 32:28 – 34:10
• Meaning of “All That’s Unseen”: 34:43
• Loss, Grief, and Hiking the Appalachian Trail: 35:39 – 37:10
• Motherhood & Reflections on Home: 38:26 – 41:46
• Closing Reflections, Sliding Doors: 43:42 – 45:32

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Conclusion

Emily Hackney’s memoir and this episode offer a rich, honest exploration of the Appalachian experience—one that radically complicates and expands the popular imagination of the region. Through her stories of pain, resilience, and the search for belonging, she challenges listeners to see “all that’s unseen” in Appalachia, and in those who, like her, sometimes feel neither here nor there but deeply shaped by both.

Transcript

[Narrator]

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[Emily Hackney]

you know, I got questions of like, did you vote for Trump? Have you ever shot a gun? You know, things that I would feel are maybe not polite conversation questions. People felt comfortable saying those to me, I guess because of the idea they had in their head of what Appalachian is like and what an Appalachian is.

[Interviewer]

Emily Hackney, welcome to settle in. Thank you so much for joining us.

[Emily Hackney]

Thank you so much for having me. I am thrilled to talk to you today.

[Interviewer]

So I should start with congratulations. This is your first book. It is a memoir. It's called all that's An Appalachian Memoir. How does it feel to have a book, your story, out in the world?

[Emily Hackney]

Absolutely surreal and a little bit scary. You know, memoir, I think, is its own special genre where people are not just judging me on my writing, but also on the way I've lived my life. So there's an extra layer to that. Yeah, that fear of having myself out in the world, but also it's exhilarating.

[Interviewer]

So it is about your life growing up in southwestern Virginia, in a town called Tazewell. Right. In Appalachia. I think it's fair to say a lot of people have ideas about Appalachia, about what life there is like, about people there are like. And you probably bumped up against those ideas a lot in your life. I'm curious how you think those ideas that other people have about where you grew up, how those line up with what life is really like on the ground.

[Emily Hackney]

Yeah. You know, when I left Appalachia for the first time, when I went to. When I went to Harvard, I was 20 years old, I never really spent any significant time outside of Appalachia. And I'd always heard that people outside Appalachia had ideas about what it was like there. Um, and I never encountered that before. So when I actually did, it was so jarring. You know, it seemed like in everybody's mind's eye, Appalachia is full of people who are very poor, very white, very drug addicted, very Republican. And, you know, there might be something to those stereotypes, but not as much as people think. Um, was disappointing to know that there is such A flat, singular image of what Appalachia is. And when that was projected onto me, it was just very disconcerting. It just did not feel true to my identity. So it was, it was a difficult stereotype to encounter.

[Interviewer]

So for someone who's never been. Tell me about life in Tazewell, Virginia. How would you describe it?

[Emily Hackney]

Very slow pace of life. I think there might be three stoplights that I can think of. It's. It's very slow. It's a, it's a. Both a coal mining town and an agricultural town. There's a little bit of both. Not very many people. You know, I graduated with 115 in my high school. It's a very peaceful place, but also it's a place where people don't often leave and if they do leave, they usually don't come back. But it's the kind of place that's, it's. It can be difficult to leave because it's isolated from the interstate. You know, the closest big city to us was an hour and a half away. So it can feel like an all consuming place. It can feel very small. Despite its peacefulness and its natural beauty, the mountains. It's both things.

[Interviewer]

One of the things that strikes me from your book is how much storytelling you grew up around. I mean, you talk about sort of. This seems to be a tradition of oral history and oral storytelling. Your grandmother telling you stories about like the time she saw a snake swallow a bird whole. Like all these tales that you're told about life there and what people have seen and lived through. And I wonder if a you agree with that, that there is that tradition there and how those stories shape your own understanding of your home, of your life.

[Emily Hackney]

Yeah, I mean, Appalachian storytelling, I feel like that's probably a big way that people used to pass the time is just telling stories. My dad was a huge storyteller. He loved to make up all these stories about monsters in the woods. And you know, you really played on that sense of Appalachian wilderness and supernatural elements of the wilds. And he loved to make up those stories. My grandma, you know, she would tell me stories about coal miners and like, this is what happened at this mine. So I, I grew up around all these stories of like what possibilities there were in the Appalachian wilderness and just. I don't know, I. I guess the stories always made me feel like Appalachia was kind of haunted and wild and there was a lot about it that couldn't be known. And it gave me this sense of curiosity that I think played into my own life. As a child, I wrote a lot of stories and wanted to make up things and how to have huge imagination. And I'm sure that that contributed to me becoming a writer. You know, later in my life I had this very innate sense of storytelling that was given to me by my family and by, you know, lots of people I grew up around. So yeah, I think that I would have to attribute a lot of this book, the way that it was written and me writing it to those early stories that were told to me. That tradition of storytelling you also write about.

[Interviewer]

There were times when your parents struggled, struggled to provide for you and your brother. You write about noticing some of your birthday money stash had gone missing, learning your parents had gone into your and your brother's piggy banks for some money to help buy groceries, to help pay the mortgage. I mean, really doing everything they could to make ends meet. What did those moments tell you and teach you about poverty, about wealth? How did you come to look at that?

[Emily Hackney]

You know, at the time, as a child, I wouldn't say that our situation was much more unusual than like, you know, our neighbors or friends. It, I think it was a very common thing and still is, you know, to live paycheck to paycheck and to struggle growing up like that, with that fear of like my dad losing his job or jobs being difficult to come by, money not always being available. Sometimes it is available, sometimes it's not. Even into adulthood. I think that it's, it's given me this sense of instability, you know, now I have a job, I have a house and my own family, but there's always this sense of things could just fall apart at any moment. I might not have a job, I might not have the money to pay for, you know, what I need to.

[Interviewer]

So you still have that today?

[Emily Hackney]

I do, yeah. And I think that poverty, while, even though, even though my family was not always impoverished and that even still feels like a very strong word to me because we always had everything that we needed. And my parents, like you said, made do with what they, they had and provided. There are still worries about money. I don't know if that ever will leave me. I don't know if that's something that I can overcome that sense of instability.

[Interviewer]

And you write about that too, as your circumstances change. That struck me because when your father does go on to get a relatively well paying administrative job at a coal mine there, and you write, the shame of being poor was nothing like the shame of being rich. What did you mean by that?

[Emily Hackney]

I don't Want to say poverty was the standard, because that's not true. But most people I knew were living on lower incomes, and that's. That's how it was in my hometown. And to make something higher than that, to make more money than that, it was almost a shameful thing to be better than. You know, it was like you. You were considered better than. Almost than. Than the average. And, you know, I write a little bit about how my. My friend's dad kind of looked down on the fact that I got to go shopping outside of, like, Christmas holiday season, because that wasn't always something that was done. And a lot of people weren't able to do that.

[Interviewer]

It's more about how other people see you. Is that right? That they would judge you for feeling like you. You might consider yourself better than them?

[Emily Hackney]

Yeah. Yeah, I guess it was a projection of insecurity almost about your financial situation.

[Interviewer]

You write a lot about your faith, too, and it played a huge role in how you were raised and in community around you. Tell us about the church and the system you were raised in. What did you learn through your faith experience there?

[Emily Hackney]

So I went to a Pentecostal church almost every Sunday as a child. My mom went, my brother went, my dad didn't go. He'd been raised Pentecostal, but he, he thought that we needed church, but maybe he didn't at that point in his life. So church was non negotiable. And it was the kind of church that on the surface was very contemporary. So there was contemporary Christian rock. The pastor, you know, he would wear jeans sometimes. There were younger families. It was certainly marketed towards a younger generation, and it was kind of a novelty. Where we grew up or where I grew up, it was a different kind of church and ended up being. Ended up growing very quickly because of that. It was just something that people hadn't experienced before. It wasn't, you know, Baptist, it wasn't Methodist, it was non denominational, even though it was actually associated with the Pentecostal Church. Um, so I think that the contemporary elements of it drew people in, but under the surface, there were a lot of fundamentalist ideas that were being pushed. There are a lot of implicit messages about gender roles and family dynamics. And yeah, there, there's just this element of fundamentalism that lay underneath the contemporary veneer.

[Interviewer]

What were some of those lessons, though? Like what. What did you believe to be true about a marriage, your place in a relationship or your role as a woman?

[Emily Hackney]

I grew to believe that that men were wiser than women, that they had an Innate authority and wisdom that women didn't have. And therefore, they should lead women. They should be the head of the household. They should, you know, be a man and take charge. So there were these very traditional gender roles that were being pushed. And like I said, not. Not always explicitly, but there's that implicit underlying message. It was. It was very subtle, and it was very sneaky. And then you could see that acted out in marriages of people that were attending that church.

[Interviewer]

And how did that all make its way into your first big relationship? There's a guy you meet through your high school, right? Sam, you're 14 when you meet him. He's 18 at the time. How does all of that. What you've learned about your role as a woman in society and in a relationship, how does that feed into the relationship?

[Emily Hackney]

Yeah. Made me feel immediately like I should defer to him. I should let this older man lead me. Tell me what's right. I believe that because he was older, because he was a man, he had this wisdom that I didn't have. And so I ended up falling very deeply into this relationship very fast, because I thought that was right, and I believed what he told me. Yeah. It just. It immediately set me on a very unhealthy dynamic in my relationship with him because of these. These roles, these gender roles that I believed in, these traditional values.

[Interviewer]

There's this aspect. There's a phrase you use in there that the pastor had brought up or that Sam brings up. The pastor had brought up a domestic discipline. What does that mean? And how does he interpret it? How do you interpret it in your relationship?

[Emily Hackney]

Yeah. So that scene. There's a guest evangelist that came to visit our church. I did not see him. I didn't. I skipped that sermon. But my fiance at the time, Sam, he went to the sermon. He spoke with the pastor afterwards, after the sermon, and he learned about this thing called domestic discipline. And purportedly, it was something that this evangelist practiced in his own marriage, and it supposedly helped them stay happy. It was a dynamic in which the husband disciplines his wife physically, and that manifested as spanking. And it was a way to, you know, more or less keep your. Keep a woman in line. It was, you know, framed as a way to help your wife become more holy, more like Jesus, less sinful, but really, underneath that, it's just a way to her more subservient. It's a way to make her a little fearful, not just of sinning, but of her husband.

[Interviewer]

And did that become a part of your relationship with Sam?

[Emily Hackney]

It did. It did so he was the one that introduced me to it, and very disturbingly to me now, I. I really took to it. I believe this is right. This is the way to have a better relationship. Because we. Our relationship is very unhealthy, like I mentioned. And we had a lot of difficulties and struggles. And I just saw it as being something that could probably help us because that was how it was told. That was how it was sold to him. He brought it up to me. That's how it's sold to me. And because I believe that he is wise and has this authority, I trust him. I believe that that's true. This is what we should do. This will make us happy.

[Interviewer]

When you do stay together for years, you do end up getting engaged, as you mentioned. But when you first meet, you're 14 and he's 18. Did anyone around you think he's too old for you? This is a bad idea. Did that ever come up?

[Emily Hackney]

My parents immediately said, this is not right. This is not good. But they are some of the few people that discourage that relationship. And I think that's because I'm not going to say it's. It's common, and I'm not going to say that it's like the standard thing to do, but I know a lot of people who are married young, a lot of women who are married young to older men. I had a friend in high school that I write about. She was married at 16. I have cousins and aunts that were married as teenagers. My grandparents, my father's parents. So it wasn't. It wasn't uncommon. But, yeah, when you. You see that this is something that people do and not just one or two people, it becomes. It kind of plants a seed in your head. Like, this is an okay thing to do, you know? And I had friends at the time who were dating much older, much older guys. We were in high school. They'd be dating guys, like, in college, out of college. So, yeah, it wasn't unusual.

[Interviewer]

So at this moment in time, your life is sort of on a certain path, right? You're with Sam. You're deeply embedded in this church community. Sam becomes your fiance. You go to community college. What happens that tells you it is time to change all of that, to break with Sam and maybe leave Tazewell.

[Emily Hackney]

We were about two and a half weeks from our wedding when he got arrested.

[Interviewer]

He turns out to be not at all the person you thought he was. He's not been kind of living a double life.

[Emily Hackney]

Yeah, I was. I was blindsided. I was horrified. My Entire world felt like it turned upside down. And after that betrayal, I had people in church that encouraged me to go back to them. And that started to open my eyes to maybe, maybe this is not really what I think it is. Maybe this church that I'm involved in, these beliefs that I'm involved in, are not as good as I believe them to be. So I decided to leave my church. And once I did that, I really didn't know what to do. All my friends were in church. I lost them. I was working at Subway at the time, and I knew I didn't want to work there forever. Um, I was in community college and didn't really have a plan, a path forward. I thought about dropping out of school, but I just kept going because I didn't know what else to do with my life. I was just, you know, spinning my wheels. I had no. I felt like I had no purpose anymore now that I wasn't going to get married, and that. That had been my whole purpose in life up till then. It felt like, and what do you do now? So I kept going to community college. I eventually decided maybe I'll apply to college and, like, try to get out of tazzle, try something different. Because I'm still surrounded by these people that I went to church with that I'm no longer friends with. The church is a big influence in my community. It's like I can't escape what happened. I can't escape the past. So maybe I need to physically go somewhere else. I need to leave. Not that influenced me to apply to college.

[Interviewer]

Had you seen other people around you who done similar moves, who. Who'd made it out and broken with the community in the past?

[Emily Hackney]

I knew a few people who had. There were a few people I can think of that I went to school with that just left. They left completely. They went to college and they never came back. And the scary thing about that, for me, considering to do that myself, was those people were kind of not looked down upon, but it was almost as if they had left. And everybody that stayed didn't trust them as much anymore. Or they were. They were just seen as different. Like, oh, they went away. They. They don't belong here anymore. They're, you know, they're too good for us. That was kind of the thing. That was the thing that I thought of growing up. Anybody that left, they're. They're a little weird and they. They don't belong. They didn't. We didn't want them here anyway. It was almost that kind of attitude.

[Interviewer]

So and you didn't want to be seen that way. Because if you didn't belong there, then where do you belong?

[Emily Hackney]

Exactly. It's like if I'm. This is my home. This is What I've spent 20 years, this place. I've spent 20 years of my life. If I don't belong here and I go to college and I don't come back, or even if I do come back and I don't belong anymore, then where do I belong? And that's exactly what I ended up encountering.

[Interviewer]

I mean, understandably, in all of that turmoil and uncertainty at the time, a lot of the mental health struggles that you'd earlier been dealing with and been told just to kind of, you know, just pray harder and God will help you take care of it. They resurface and in very severe and very worrying ways. And you start to think about self harm and you think about ways that you might end your life. How do you reach a point, point where you know that you need help?

[Emily Hackney]

I don't necessarily know if it was me knowing that I needed to, but at the time, you know, I, I go up to Harvard, I have all these very difficult mental health struggles. I had made one friend the first semester that I was there and he ended up becoming my boyfriend and he pointed out to me that I was not doing very well and, and like, logically I knew that, but I had a really deep distrust of the mental health system because I'd had such a negative experience with it back home. Never really able to get the help that I needed, it seemed like. So it took somebody else pointing out to me that maybe I needed to reach out and get some help and find some resources. Then I finally became aware that yeah, maybe I do.

[Interviewer]

I was actually wondering first about the moment when you were still back in Tazewell and you decided to try to go and find some help and kind of end up running into a system where you feel like, oh, this is actually not going to help me at all. Can you tell us about that?

[Emily Hackney]

Yeah. So I first decided to go. After I had these self harm thoughts, I decided to reach out to a local. Sure, what you call it, Mental health services board. And they weren't able to take me as a client, which was very deeply embarrassing to me because I'd already struggled with the idea of whether I should even go or not because I had these root, these ideas ingrained in me that if I just pray harder or if I just, you know, trust in God more, then I'll be healed. I'll Be okay. So reaching out was already a scary thing. And when it didn't work out, I just felt so deeply embarrassed and ashamed and kind of beyond help. And then when I tried to reach out again and I'm denied help again, it was just. It was this moment of like, okay, this entire system is broken. Like, I cannot get help this way. So now what? I don't know. And I just felt very lonely. I felt very. On my own. Yeah. Beyond help.

[Interviewer]

There is this portrait you paint of a young woman who's sort of yearning to break free and stuck in the momentum of it all. And you do end up applying to transfer to Harvard, to Harvard, of all places. Why Harvard?

[Emily Hackney]

Well, so, yeah, so I. I decided to apply to college because I didn't know what else to do, right? Like, I didn't know what else to my future was going to be. And I applied to a few in state schools for the tuition, and I had a little bit of spending money left over for the applications. And Harvard. That was something I joked about with my former fiance. And he discouraged me from applying not just to Harvard, but to anywhere. He didn't think. He didn't believe that I was capable of, like, having any kind of career. He was just very, very negative towards any of my ambitions. And in one of those conversations we had, I made a joke that I was going to apply to Harvard. And he was like, you couldn't get in? And I was like, well, I didn't plan to try. I was kind of trying to lighten the mood here, you know, but it didn't work out. You know, he didn't get the joke. So I had that in my head, you know, once I broke up with him, didn't know what else I was going to do. I was applying to colleges, and I was. Was still very, very upset with him at the time. We'd broken up less than a year earlier. So I had that in my head, and I thought, I'll just apply to Harvard and see what happens. You know, I. I didn't sort of

[Interviewer]

despite him, maybe, or the memory of

[Emily Hackney]

him, spite, but I. I mean, I didn't seriously think I could get in. I. I didn't even really take the application that seriously. I mean, I applied the night of the deadline, you know, just kind of like throwing it into the wind and something would happen.

[Interviewer]

So when you get in, what's that like? What do you think?

[Emily Hackney]

It probably took me days before I actually believed I was in hallucination. Did I dream this? This is insane. I. I was just Shocked. I really thought I had no chance at all. Yeah, it was, it was beyond surreal. And then actually moving up there, I thought, oh, this is, this is real. I'm actually here. How did this happen? It just mind bending that it had. Yeah.

[Interviewer]

And it's not an easy transition. Right? I mean, what, what is that first, like when you arrive and you start to meet people from all different kinds of backgrounds and all different lived experiences and they start to meet you. What, what is that like for you?

[Emily Hackney]

That was also a very surreal experience. I felt like I'd been dropped on another planet. Just meeting all kinds of people from all different backgrounds I've never met before. Never? Yeah. Never encountered so many different kinds of cultures or languages. It was, it was exhilarating in a way, because this is so new. This is great meeting all these different people. But also it very quickly became, it became. What's the word for it? I just felt a little bit exoticized myself because my accent, people immediately picked up on it and went, oh, where are you from? I say Appalachia. And then they've got this idea in their head of what that means, what Appalachia is, and suddenly I'm a stereotype. I'm kind of flattened in their eyes. I got questions of like, did you vote for Trump? Have you ever shot a gun? You know, things that I would feel or maybe not polite conversation question. People felt comfortable saying those to me, I guess because of the idea they had in their head of what, what Appalachia is like and what an Appalachian is.

[Interviewer]

And when you're getting those kinds of questions and you're starting to get a sense of how people see you or things that they assume about you, does that then make it harder to, to fit in, to feel like you belong, to make a home?

[Emily Hackney]

Definitely. It just made me feel immediately that there was this impenetrable wall between me and whoever I was speaking to. Like, they didn't really see me as a person, they just saw the accent and the associations that they made with the accent and my background. So most people that I encountered up there, it felt almost impossible to relate to them because I just felt like they didn't see me as a person.

[Interviewer]

There are struggles there, you document. And again, that your storytelling is so vivid and so intimate and so vulnerable. You talk about trying to make friends and the few friends you make and the guy you date, going to parties and trying different things, but it's a very solitary existence, it sounds like. And it leads you sort of down another self destructive path. Right where you do find yourself sleeping with strangers for money at some point. There are moments where it feels like you're really trying to figure out where the limits of your lows might be. Is that a fair way for me to characterize, I mean, what. What is going on in your mind and in your heart at those moments?

[Emily Hackney]

I think that's absolutely fair to characterize it that way. That couldn't be more accurate. I mean, I think it was a continuation of this thing that had started probably early in my life in the. In the church, thinking of men as strong and authoritative and wise and being able to lead the way. There's this association of. I guess I had this thought, like, men can comfort me. Like, this is where I turn to when I need help. And so the unhealthy relationship dynamic that had started, you know, in the church with Sam, it continues on to these strange men, because that's where I'd always. I'd thought, this is where I can find some sort of solace. This is the one place I know that I will be able to find comfort or help or, you know, whatever you want to call it.

[Interviewer]

Writing, though, writing offers you a haven. How so?

[Emily Hackney]

Yeah, it does. And I. I was very grateful to discover that, you know, I. I started out in a bunch of biology classes at Harvard, immediately started failing those. Um, so I had to find another path of what can I do to stay here and also stay sane? And I ended up taking, you know, a writing class, some English classes. And I. I found out that writing about my life in Appalachia and what Appalachia was like, that became my comfort. That was a way for me to start to feel some sense of belonging on that campus where I just felt so lonely all the time.

[Interviewer]

And the essays that you're writing there, I mean, those are eventually what go on to become this memoir. Did you see that back then as you were writing them?

[Emily Hackney]

No, not. Not at all. I would have never guessed that, you know, these little essays that I'm writing for class, these five page, six page essays, would eventually become chapters of this book. But quite a few of them did. So, yeah, I would have never expected that to have happened without some encouragement.

[Interviewer]

I mean, there are throughout Emily, undeniable cultural, and these days, like, political cultural themes throughout the stories that you tell. And you talk about hearing folks back at home as they're learning about candidate Donald Trump, President Donald Trump, about him gaining popularity in Appalachia, they like that he told it like it is. Things we've heard in a lot of communities. Where he has strong levels of support. Did his strength and his support in the place that you call home. Did all that make sense to you at the time?

[Emily Hackney]

Absolutely. I mean, most of the people I knew were Trump supporters right from the very beginning, because he comes to Appalachia and he says, I'm going to help you. He pays attention. He, you know, makes us feel seen for the first time in decades. And when you are coming from a place that's really struggling, like Appalachia often does, or at least Coalfield Appalachia, you have to trust in whoever offers you hope, because what else is there? What else do you hope in? So, yeah, at first I was. I was like, maybe this is. This is the way. Maybe he's actually going to help. Maybe. Yeah, maybe this is right. And I write about going to a. A, A rally that he held in Southwest Virginia at Radford University and feeling just the tension of that room didn't feel right to me. And the way that he behaved, like seeing him in person kind of turned me off from the idea of him. But if I hadn't gone to that rally, I don't know. I don't know if I think it would have taken me a longer time to change my opinion of him. And even still, when I was at Harvard, I still had conflicted feelings about him because so many people I knew back home were still so supportive of him. And he was early in his first presidency. And, you know, we've seen him do a lot of things that now I'm like, oh, my gosh, how could I ever have have supported him? But at that point, it didn't. It hadn't gotten to that point yet. And so I had these conflicted feelings about him. And once I started really looking into his policies, or lack thereof, in one of my writing classes, in my investigative journalism class, that was what finally, I guess, made me move and started to move me in a different direction.

[Interviewer]

You've probably seen the comparisons being made now, right, between your book and. And the book written by Vice President Vance Hillbilly Elegee, about his time growing up in Appalachia and then in Ohio. Do you buy those comparisons? Do you agree with them?

[Emily Hackney]

He makes a lot of generalizations about Appalachia based on his own experiences, his own anecdotal experiences, and I don't feel like those are fair characterizations to make. I think that he probably encountered a lot of what I did. So I go up to Harvard, he goes to Yale, and he writes about being an oddity to people at Yale to New Englanders. And you know, I, I felt that way too. And I encountered this big appetite for what is Appalachia like? What are people like? You know, everybody has the stereotype in their head. But I think that he saw that people wanted to know more about Appalachia and their stereotypes because we were on the heels of the 2016 election. Appalachia was being talked about as, you know, being so red, so Trump supporting. I just feel like he, he capitalized on that appetite and he saw that people wanted to know more about Appalachia, but maybe not really. They just wanted confirmation of what they already thought about it. And I think he, he plays into those stereotypes by using his own stories from his childhood to say like all of Appalachia is addicted. Like addiction is endemic. It's such a problem. It's, it's all over. Poverty is so widespread. And I just feel like that's a flattened and non nuanced characterization of Appalachia. He cannot speak for Appalachia as a whole as he does in his book.

[Interviewer]

You feel like his anecdotes, his story don't directly relate to what you experienced growing up in a different part of Appalachia. Is that fair?

[Emily Hackney]

It is, yeah. I don't think that his story could speak for anybody else's. So in my book, I'm very careful to say this isn't my experience in Appalachia. It's not going to be everybody's. And I don't think that he, he does the same thing. He's not careful that same way.

[Interviewer]

I mean, the book is called all that's Unseen. It's this idea of, of being seen, of being heard. I mean, there are more than 26 million people who call the Appalachian region home. What is unseen that you are trying to get people to see.

[Emily Hackney]

There are a lot of elements of the book that went into that title. So first and foremost, I would like for people to understand that Appalachia is not just one thing, it's not just the stereotype in your head. And there can be a lot of different experiences of what Appalachia is based on. Know what family you're born into or where an Appalachia you're born, or where you go to school, whether you get an education or not. You know, I know that my story is exceptional in that I went to Harvard and a lot of people from the Appalachian coal fields don't and may not even go to college. So I know that my story is a little different in that way. But I want people to Know that Appalachia. It's seen a certain way, but there are other ways to see it. So that was the main. That was what I was thinking about when I was naming this book.

[Interviewer]

You also write at the end about losing your father very young. Right. He was just 53 years old when he suffered a heart attack. And you pick up on this old idea that the two of you had to hike the Appalachian Trail. Trail. Tell me why and what that was like.

[Emily Hackney]

That was something that we just kind of played around with, that idea of hiking the Appalachian Trail. And when I say we played around with that idea, like, we never went backpacking, camping. I never went backpacking. So it was just something we talked about. It was just an ideal that we could. It was an idea that we could. We could do one day. But after he passed away, I was in grad school at the time, but I quickly dropped out. I didn't feel like I could do it anymore, and I decided to go hike the Appalachian Trail kind of in honor of him. It was just a way to process my grief, I suppose. So, yeah, I went and did the whole thing somehow. Like I said, I'd never been backpacking before, and I was kind of out of my mind with grief. It just. I was like, I'm gonna go do this. And that I did.

[Interviewer]

I mean, it is really hard, right? It is not an easy trail. It's. How many. How long did it take you to do that whole thing?

[Emily Hackney]

It was about five and a half months. It's. It's around 2,200 miles.

[Interviewer]

That is a pilgrimage of sorts. What. What. Why do that? What do you think you. You processed or were able to do in carrying out that journey?

[Emily Hackney]

It was a way to process my grief, mainly because it was such a shock for my. Had to pass away so young when he was so perfectly healthy, and then one day, he's suddenly not here anymore. And I guess my grief around that was so big, I felt like I had to do something big to not necessarily overcome grief, because I don't think that's possible, but just as a way to deal with it. And I didn't feel like I could deal with it by continuing on the way that I had, which was going to school and just living normal everyday life, paying bills, and, you know, I just didn't feel like I could do that anymore. So this was a way of. I don't know. It's an alternate way of processing grief.

[Interviewer]

You have your own family now, right?

[Emily Hackney]

I do.

[Interviewer]

You are a mother.

[Emily Hackney]

How old My daughter is 6 months.

[Interviewer]

Your daughter is just 6 months old. How is she doing?

[Emily Hackney]

She is great. Well, she's teething right now, so she's not as great as she was a couple weeks ago.

[Interviewer]

Yeah, everything is a phase, I should tell you. Everything is a phase. How are you doing? How is becoming a mother changed you in your own life now, but also how you look back at your own early life?

[Emily Hackney]

Yeah, that's such an interesting question because I feel like there are so many things you can't or you don't realize about your childhood or that you. You start seeing in a different light once you have children of your own. Like just the. I guess it makes more sense to me now. Not that it didn't before, but, you know, when my parents did had to do like everything they could. Like, you know, use my. My brother's birthday money to pay the bills. It's like you have begun to understand how you would just go to the ends of the earth for your child. You would do anything you could to provide for them and keep them happy and safe. That. That really rings true for me now than more than ever that I have my own. I have my own daughter.

[Interviewer]

You also end in the book with your reflections about your home and the place you grew up. You have this paragraph I want to share here with folks because you say I could never stay gone from the mountains for long. My dear Appalachia so painful and holy I loved it despite needing something it couldn't keep Give me something I couldn't even name. How would you describe your relationship today with the benefit of time and distance, with this place that you call home?

[Emily Hackney]

Even with the time and distance, I feel like my relationship with. It's still pretty similar. It's complicated. It's a place that I love so dearly and I feel so rooted in it. I just, like I said, I feel it deeply in my bones and I love it. And I still feel like I'm part of it. But at the same time, it's. It's a difficult place for me to live and I don't feel like it's the right place for me to be at this point in my life. I feel like having a daughter, wanting to give her the best opportunities as possible. I want. I want her to be more exposed to the outside world. And I want her to be exposed to a lot of different ideas and places and backgrounds, different people that maybe I. I wasn't when I was younger. Her relationship with Appalachia is complicated because I love it so much. And also I still Feel that feeling of not getting everything I want from it.

[Interviewer]

Do you feel like you could ever go back? Is that something you, you think about?

[Emily Hackney]

I think about it a lot and my husband and I talk about it a lot. He's also from, from southwest Virginia. And we also talk about how it's. It's kind of a difficult place to reckon with because our political views don't align with like the majority political views there. And where we've lived outside of Appalachia, and we've both lived in major cities, we live. We lived around the United States. It feels kind of confining or it feels difficult to go back to such a small town where you know everybody and everybody knows you. It just feels like there's more out there to experience than living in a small town in Appalachia will allow. So I don't know what it would be like to go back home at this point in my life. Maybe when I'm older. I don't know. It's just an open ended question.

[Interviewer]

For me, one of the things I found to be true about becoming a mother was you grow this urge for your children to understand you as a person separate from their mother. And I know your daughter's very young, so I don't know if you felt that yet, but what would you want her to understand about you and where you come from and the place you call home?

[Emily Hackney]

I think I wanted to understand, hopefully what I convey in the book, that despite being from a place you don't necessarily like, have to live up to the expectations of what being from that place means. You can be your own person. You don't have to live up to any kind of stereotype. And I would, I would hope that she would understand that Appalachia's just a very complicated place. And I would hope that she would come to understand, like I do, that you don't have to understand Appalachia.

[Interviewer]

Has anyone from back home read the book? Have you gotten any feedback from people you grew up with or people who are still there?

[Emily Hackney]

I've had quite a few people that I knew of in Tazewell, or even if I didn't know them directly, I'd heard, like, their name before. I've had several people reach out to me and say, I can't wait to read this book. I had one woman reach out and say, I grew up in Tazville. I have struggled with the religious influence of the same church that I grew up in. She's like, I'm really looking forward to reading this book and understanding My own experience better through your experience. So that was, that was a really touching message to know that somebody else has had a similar experience to me and is also trying to process it and that maybe my story can help her understand her own.

[Interviewer]

In writing a memoir, it probably becomes very clear, and I've heard this from other folks who've done the same endeavor, how simple decisions, or even just one big decision completely changed the course of your, your life. And in your case, leaving home, breaking from the past, breaking from your faith, tradition, going to another school, all of that seems to have created a completely different life than you otherwise would have had. Do you ever think about that sliding door kind of moment? Like, what would your life look like today if you hadn't left, if you hadn't made those decisions along the way?

[Emily Hackney]

I do think about that, and I don't think about it extensively because it's kind of scary to me.

[Interviewer]

Scary? How so?

[Emily Hackney]

If my fiance had not been arrested right before our wedding, I would have married him. And I think that we would have had children. You know, I very strongly bought into the idea of, like, a woman's purpose is to be a good wife and a good mother and have, have lots of children. So I think we would have had children. And I don't know at what point I would have or if ever I would have become disillusioned with that life. Like, if I had not left and seen that there were different ways of living and different ways of believing, I don't know that I would have started to question the way I was living. I don't know if I would have been, would have eventually become pretty unhappy. I, I, I don't know. I had this idealistic version in my head of what our marriage and relationship would be like. And that felt like my purpose. And so if that had never been called into question and, you know, kind of thrown on its head, I don't know, I don't know that I ever would have left.

[Interviewer]

It's a very different life you lead now. You have a lot of life left to live. And we're really, really grateful to you, you for sharing this part of it in the book. The book is all that's An Appalachian Memoir. The author is Emily Hackney. And Emily, it has been a real pleasure being able to speak with you. Thank you so much for making the time.

[Emily Hackney]

Thank you so much for letting me speak to you today. I really appreciate it.

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