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“What Ain’t Called Melungeons is Called Hillbillies”: Southern Appalachia’s In-Between People
Resource ID: 10305
Type: journal article, article
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- UPDATED: 6.29.2025
- Melungeons, populations
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publication:
DOI:
date:
2004
pages:
pp. 259-278
notes:
. . .
abstract:
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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