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Book Cover for: Making Our Future: Visionary Folklore and Everyday Culture in Appalachia, Emily Hilliard

Making Our Future: Visionary Folklore and Everyday Culture in Appalachia

Emily Hilliard

Paperback
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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.

Book Details

  • Publisher: University of North Carolina Press
  • Publish Date: Nov 22nd, 2022
  • Pages: 312
  • Language: English
  • Edition: undefined - undefined
  • Dimensions: 9.20in - 6.00in - 0.90in - 1.00lb
  • EAN: 9781469671628
  • Categories: • Folklore & Mythology• Regional Studies

About the Author

Hilliard, Emily: - Emily Hilliard is a folklorist and writer based in central Appalachia. She is the former West Virginia state folklorist and the founding director of the West Virginia Folklife Program. Find more of her work at emilyehilliard.com.

What people are saying

Mentioner image for: Kim Kelly
Kim Kelly
2 years

Kim Kelly is a journalist, author, and labor activist.

My time in Alabama was short but sweet, and I’m so excited to be headed to West Virginia for the next few days. Today’s plane reading couldn’t be more appropriate @hey_emhilly 🌲

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Los Angeles Review of Books
@LAReviewofBooks
2 years

Los Angeles Review of Books

"Hilliard is in an excellent position to observe her surroundings, able to see things from a curious outsider’s perspective and with a degree of freshness that lends authority to her observations. Not once does she condescend," writes @tomzoellner. https://t.co/YCo7IBlWvi

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NightStand Reads
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NightStand Reads is dedicated to bringing awareness of great books to the masses. Millions of great books go unread and we want to help change that.

#RT @LAReviewofBooks: "Hilliard is in an excellent position to observe her surroundings, able to see things from a curious outsider’s perspective and with a degree of freshness that lends authority to her observations. Not once does she condescend," writ… https://t.co/jwu0BAXQOc

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Praise for this book

"A fascinating example of folklore fieldwork in West Virginia. People from the state . . . will find places and concepts they recognize thoughtfully and respectfully represented, and outsiders will gain an understanding of the deeply complex and communal past and present of the Mountain State."--Southern Review of Books
"An incontrovertible case for viewing folklore as a dynamic force not just of the past, but of the present & the future."--Appalachian Mountain Books
"[Hilliard's] work is grounded in the present and looks to the future rather than simply focusing on preservation of the past. She sidesteps nostalgia in favor of a cooperative approach that catalogs long-running traditions while seeking to identify and participate in new cultural practices as they emerge."--Chapter 16
"Making Our Future brings fresh and profound insights to our current understanding of Appalachian culture and music."--Songlines
"[Hilliard] is . . . in an excellent position to observe her surroundings, able to see things from a curious outsider's perspective and with a degree of freshness that lends authority to her observations. Not once does she condescend."--Los Angeles Review of Books
"An important intervention in a field that has too often constructed Appalachian culture as stuck in the past, and Hilliard's non-hierarchical methodology offers a framework for future work that might also consider conservative and reactionary culture in the region as also connecting past, present, and future."--Ancillary Review of Books
"In Making Our Future, Emily Hilliard provides a more radical portrait of Appalachian West Virginia than it may appear to be at first glance. Through the words and expertise of West Virginians, this book tells the story of small-town museums, local festivals, songwriting, hot dogs, and independent professional wrestling with an eye toward how these traditions developed and what they mean for people, their communities, and their state. . . . Hilliard provides a platform, instead of a voice, to these people."--Journal of Southern History
"Hilliard's extensive fieldwork and in-depth interviews with local residents provide the foundation for her rich and vivid portrayal of the region. . . . Demonstrating methods that material culture scholars and museum professionals can all use to include more quotidian aspects of material cultures in their own work, Making Our Future proves that Appalachian folk cultures are very much alive, adaptable, and more diverse than most people might expect."--Winterthur Portfolio
"Making Our Future is an excellent set of 'long-form essays' . . . a valuable contribution to the growing field of inquiry and praxis of Appalachian futurisms and a model for collaborative ethnography and representation of marginalized voices and communities."--Journal of American Folklore
"A crisp and engaging examination of the cultural vibrancy of Appalachia. . . . Hilliard's greatest strength is not simply exploring the diversity of culture within West Virginia, but pointing the reader toward a shift in thinking about the role of those who practice traditional folkways."--North Carolina Historical Review

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