On October 1st of 2021, the Associated Press published an article titled “In Appalachia, people watch covid-19, race issues from afar:”

Articles like this are the reason at least two high schools in southeast Ohio now have a class called “Appalachian Studies." But it's not the first article written by a major news organization attempting to characterize an entire community of people after a short, drive-through interaction with the community.

Try this one from The Washington Post: They've Shifted the Burden to Us: A Food Pantry Struggles to Feed an Increasingly Hungry Ohio Community. Or this one from ProPublica, Taylor Sappington Why the Perfect Red State Democrat Lost. I'm sure if you keep checking back, there will be more.

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Not only does this latest article claim southeast Ohio’s Appalachia is a region “where the pandemic has barely been felt,” (something that I as someone who lives in this region, is a teacher, and whose entire family contracted covid-19 over the summer would starkly disagree with) the article acknowledges that “rural Appalachians have long bristled at the way outsiders have portrayed them, replacing their complicated reality with stereotypes about poor and ignorant mountain people.”

The rest of the article, after that acknowledgement, that disclaimer, that warning - goes on to replace our region’s complicated reality with stereotypes about poor and ignorant mountain people. The end of the article actually focuses on two places - Bidwell and Nelsonville, both small towns in southeast Ohio. Yes, they interviewed a woman from each of those places, but it wasn’t to allow these women to have a voice or power over their own story, regardless of the clip of one of them reading aloud her private journal or the interview of the other walking along the street with her nephew. Instead, these women became those places. Their stories just equated to that of entire towns.

I could go on. But instead, I shared the article with my students, and they responded. My students - from Bidwell, Ohio, from where a woman in this article that is interviewed, recorded, and videographed - along with students from Nelsonville, Ohio, from where another woman from the article was interviewed - have written an antithesis to this article.

They've highlighted their favorite parts about this region and the areas that make us proud and delighted to live here. They’ve collected their stories, hopes, and dreams - and actively oppose articles like this.

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Now - this isn’t to discount any of the people in these articles, or their stories. Each person mentioned or interviewed in these articles deserve to have their story told - not exploited or used to represent entire communities of people.

There is so much beauty in the people here. There is so much beauty in the loyalty here. There is so much beauty in the landscape that thousands and thousands of people flock to during the summer to experience, and it’s not all filled with abandoned cars along the treeline and houses stacked upon one another. But when it is, we don’t just take pictures and drive on by - we ask, we offer, we deliver.

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Read on to discover letters written directly to author of the Associated Press article (Tim Sullivan) as well as memoirs written by both River Valley and Nelsonville-York juniors and seniors.