Making Our Future

Visionary Folklore and Everyday Culture in Appalachia

Emily Hilliard

• Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN: 9781469671628, 9781469671611
• eBook ISBN: 9781469671635
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Folklore & Mythology
• Index: Social Sciences

Drawing from her work as state folklorist, Emily Hilliard explores contemporary folklife in West Virginia and challenges the common perception of both folklore and Appalachian culture as static, antiquated forms, offering instead the concept of “visionary folklore” as a future-focused, materialist, and collaborative approach to cultural work.

With chapters on the expressive culture of the West Virginia teachers' strike, the cultural significance of the West Virginia hot dog, the tradition of independent pro wrestling in Appalachia, the practice of nonprofessional women songwriters, the collective counternarrative of a multiracial coal camp community, the invisible landscape of writer Breece D'J Pancake’s hometown, the foodways of an Appalachian Swiss community, the postapocalyptic vision presented in the video game Fallout 76, and more, the book centers the collective nature of folklife and examines the role of the public folklorist in collaborative engagements with communities and culture. Hilliard argues that folklore is a unifying concept that puts diverse cultural forms in conversation, as well as a framework that helps us reckon with the past, understand the present, and collectively shape the future.

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• A Note on Collaborative Ethnographic Methodology and Writing as Public Folklore Praxis
• Introduction
• Chapter 1. We All Own It: The Interracial, Intergenerational Community Counternarrative of the Scotts Run Museum
• Chapter 2. So I May Write of All These Things: The Individual and the Collective in the Songwriting of Shirley Campbell, Ella Hanshaw, Cora Hairston, and Elaine Purkey
• Chapter 3. Up Here You Use What You’ve Got: Foodways and the Elasticity of Tradition in the Swiss Community of Helvetia, West Virginia
• Chapter 4. Something Deeply Rooted: The Invisible Landscape of Breece D’J Pancake’s Milton, West Virginia
• Chapter 5. The Daughters of Mother Jones: Lessons of Care Work and Labor Struggle in the Expressive Culture of the West Virginia Teachers’ Strike
• Chapter 6. Friends of Coleslaw: On the West Virginia Hot Dog
• Chapter 7. Will the Squared Circle Be Unbroken? Independent Pro Wrestling as a West Virginia Tradition
• Chapter 8. Wild, Wonderful, Wasteland West Virginia: Speculative Futures, Vernacular Culture, and the Embodied Tourism of Fallout 76
• Conclusion. We’re Fighting for Our Future: Toward a Visionary Folklore
• Acknowledgments
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index