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Un-framing Appalachia

March 15, 2016

Reflections in and about Williamson. Photo by Anna Reich

What is Williamson, West Virginia?

I don’t believe it is possible to define a town, much less a town I met only 36 hours ago.

I arrived in Charleston’s Yeager Airport shortly after noon on Sunday. The hotel offered a complimentary shuttle from the airport with a most amicable driver. While chatting about various things West Virginia, such as my childhood obsession with the Sacramento Kings and specifically West Virginia’s own Jason Williams, the driver asked the purpose of my visit. I explained the Fulbright – Amizade collaboration with Sustainable Williamson, the idea of global service learning, and some additional background on the Fulbright Program. He asked me to clarify where I would be going.

“Williamson?” he said, “that town is so poor they have a layaway program at the dollar store.”

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Enrichment

Appalachia on the Cusp of Spring

March 14, 2016

Allison Braden, a Fulbright English Teaching Assistant in Bangladesh 2013-2014, is a Fulbright U.S. Student Program Alumni participant in the Fulbright Amizade 2016 service-learning activity.

I am, frankly, overwhelmed. In the first day and a half of my experience with Amizade in Appalachia, I’ve been forced to confront a swarm of questions that I don’t have answers to and are perhaps unanswerable, but our asking questions without necessarily arriving at conclusions will give shape to the rest of our week.

Today I saw a barber shop called Cuttin’ Up with Belinda. I loved that. I love Americana, and here, it’s everywhere. There are church steeples, American flags, and main streets. There aren’t very many streetlights. My mind jumps from comparison to comparison: Convenience stores selling a little of everything remind me of Bangladesh. The high school football stadium, an island of bright green in a sea of gravel on top of a mined mountain, made me think of Friday Night Lights on TV. The old pickup trucks and main streets remind me of south Georgia and country songs. Despite how different my own community is from the ones I’m getting to visit here and despite West Virginia’s reputation elsewhere in the country, my associations with small town America are almost universally positive. In fact, I have the tendency to romanticize rural communities.

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