Making Progress

I've been pretty quiet lately because I've been writing and reading all about Appalachia. I have lots of notes and hope to make some commentary on what I've been reading, which shouldn't be difficult to do since I'll be writing it up for my dissertation anyway.

Yesterday I wrote the first draft of my Findings from the interviews I did in the fall. It can be very difficult to write about some experiences, especially the not-so-nice side of family life. On the one hand I want to tell the truth about individual women's experiences; on the other hand, I don't want to be another researcher disparaging my home culture. So it's a tricky balance between the romanticized version and the warts and all version. In a way this is a psychological exercise, similar to that which anyone goes through when trying to make sense of bad things.

Here at Virginia Tech, for example, we have a wonderful community that has pulled together when tragedy strikes. However, we know there were serious issues in the way students' mental health issues are dealt with on campus- among other things. But life isn't a newspaper article with good guys and bad guys clearly delineated (as you can tell I am not a big fan of reporters!).

So in many ways, it's the same thing with Appalachia, whether you're thinking about the coal industry or any extraction industry, or negative aspects of the dominant culture. So that's my challenge, to capture the complexity of family life in the region, and the changes in family life, without relaying on simplistic stereotypes.