Hello Folks and welcome to Season 3 (!) of the Good Folk Podcast,
After our summer hiatus, it’s great to be back in this space, with a lineup of conversations for our fall season. Today, we kick off with writer Matthew Ferrence for a chat on Appalachia, rurality, authenticity, the role of the arts in shaping rural identity, and, of course, the Democratic party’s recent interest in embracing rural communities, perhaps seen most clearly with the Harris/Walz Realtree hat, which sold out within 30 minutes and which is already being duped on Etsy, eBay, and Amazon (and which Cody Cook-Parrott wrote about in their newsletter, Monday Monday).
Matthew lives and writes at the confluence of Appalachia and the Rust Belt. With his newest book, I Hate It Here, Please Vote For Me: Essays on Rural Political Decacy, he has completed a trilogy (of sorts) focused on rural Appalachian identity and political narrative. His other two books are Appalachia North and All-American Redneck. He teaches creative writing at Allegheny College in northwestern Pennsylvania.
Does the Democratic party genuinely care about rural America or do they turn to it only when it can help them win an election? Can the arts help us build a common value system? Who is allowed to lay claim to rural identity—and should it really matter where you are from originally, so long as you care about the place you now call home? These are just some of the questions we discuss in today’s episode. I hope you enjoy this conversation.
EP 31: Matthew Ferrence