“What Ain’t Called Melungeons is Called Hillbillies”: Southern Appalachia’s In-Between People |
“What Ain’t Called Melungeons is Called Hillbillies”: Southern Appalachia’s In-Between People
Forum for Modern Language Studies
Volume 40, Issue 3 (2004)
page 259-278
DOI: 10.1093/fmls/40.3.259
Rachel Rubin, Professor of American Studies
University of Massachusetts, Boston
The essay investigates literary evocations of Appalachia’s “in-between” people, the Melungeons. Melungeons are deployed by some as mystery (no one has conclusively traced their origins) and by others as solid fact (they are non-white) to shore up their own contingent sense of white privilege. The construction of Melungeon identity by outsiders has facilitated a process of “re-centring” whereby those poor white people so frequently scorned as “hillbillies” place themselves at the heart of a racialised mountain landscape.
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Tags: Forum for Modern Language Studies, melungeon, Rachel Rubin