This Must Be the Place

fresh biscuits and warm smiles
This past summer I lived in Madison
County, North Carolina, a modestly
populated region located in the
western-most part of the state, pressed
tightly against Tennessee’s border and the
Appalachian trail. A small highway connects
the county’s more sizeable towns, and local
roads, precariously snaking their way up and
down the mountains, never widen to more
than two lanes in either direction.
Most of my time in Madison County
was spent driving, due to the sheer amount
of distance that separated one destination
from another, but I never particularly minded
it — there was something about the way a
mountain emerged from the horizon, jutting
out to a peak, that filled me with both awe
and apprehension, overwhelmed by the earth’s
ability to create such landforms on its own, and
a bit frightened, too. At times it felt as though
Appalachia never intended to welcome me or
its other residents — when a road’s turn was
a bit too sharp around a mountain’s curve my
heart would skip a beat, and I’d be reminded
that I was in God’s country, and only He was at
the receiving end of His creation’s full mercy.
(And I should note that I’m an unwavering
atheist, only further testament to the land’s
wraithlike atmosphere.)
Although I’ve considered myself a
southerner for as long as I can remember — I
was born in Raleigh to working-class parents
who drawl their vowels and wax poetic about the
good ol’ days of George W. Bush — Appalachia
made quick work of me, and I often found myself
reaching deep into my reserves of southern
lexicon and experiences to keep up. Of course I
like chicken and dumplings, corn bread, and apple
pie; it’s funny, my mom keeps a BB gun by the
back door to shoo away deer; yes, I’ve been fishing
on a Jon boat, at my Big Ma’s pond, actually; sadly,
my Papaw passed away years ago.
They were experiences and words that
I sometimes balked at uttering back home,
especially at Duke — my family’s socioeconomic
class has changed since my adolescence, and I’m
by no means from the middle of nowhere, but
to reveal that I have family members who live
in double-wide trailers is like stamping “white
trash” across my forehead; to out myself as a
thoroughbred southerner is to have all of its
stereotypes and shortcomings thrust upon me.
It never felt like I was consciously performing
my southern identity in Appalachia, but perhaps
rediscovering it, so I dug my heels firmly into
the land that birthed me and found that it was
much nicer not to pretend.
Time seemed to stand still in the
mountains. Everyone and everything moved like
molasses, but I never found myself longing for a
faster pace. I think that’s what I miss most about
the South — how much faster I felt in relation
to my surroundings. For some, this is the region’s
greatest downfall, evidence of its fondness for
regressive politics and lack of modernity, and for
those prone to restlessness, it probably seems as
though the South will never be able to provide
for its most ambitious dreamers. But in an era
of neoliberalism, where the individual’s ability
to lurch toward the future with insatiable hands
marks his highest worth, there are restorative
powers enmeshed in taking your time.
Sometimes I hated Appalachia. Ninetyeight
percent of Madison County’s residents
are white, as were most of the students I taught
while I lived there. The singular black girl whom
I met in Madison County, a rising sixth grader
from Mars Hill, confided in one of our program’s
teachers that she was terrified of entering middle
school because a few of the white children in her
fifth grade class started calling her the n-word.
She believed that it would only worsen as she
got older, and none of us — not me, or the other
interns, or the program’s staff, none of whom were
black — could do anything to comfort her or
convince her otherwise. We knew, in the deepest
pits of our stomachs, that she was right.
And the very last thing I want to do
is paint western North Carolina with a broad
stroke, because, as my time there taught me, it is
deserving of far more nuance and understanding
than it currently receives. But the deep-rooted
racism of the region is undeniable — even
though black Appalachians have provided some
of the area’s most rich and valuable history
— as is the overbearing presence of religion.
Crosses and churches pop up from the earth
like town homes in the suburbs, and there are
far more religious institutions than schools,
restaurants, or businesses. My boss was fixated
on her interns interacting with Appalachia in
“genuine” ways, and to her, that usually involved
attending Sunday church services, which were
unbearable for someone who hadn’t been in a
church since she was 7 years old. (Pentecostal
sermons are also sort of terrifying.)
And yet, some of the most earnest and
moving interactions I had during my time in
Appalachia were not in a church, but outside
of its walls: at a community barbeque, or in a
school’s classroom, or at a county-wide bluegrass
festival. They were the same Christians as those
inside the church, of course, but there, I could
speak to them not as people adjacent to their
oft-weaponized institutions, but as individuals.
I’ll never forget when our program coordinator,
a woman born and raised in Madison County,
told me that, in the previous summer, a student
in our all-girls program was a transgender boy.
I braced myself to hear something off-kilter or
ill-informed, but instead, her face softened, and
she lamented, “Some teachers refused to call
him by his preferred name, and it made me so
upset. At the end of the day, God loves us for
who we are. Who am I to tell someone else that
their existence is wrong?”
I could neatly tie up my experience
in the mountains with recklessly positive
declarations and a call for empathy, but I don’t
want to. I’m not a salesman for the South — and,
as a white woman, it’s not a position I should
ever occupy. What I can attest to, what I feel good
about telling folks, is that when I opened up my
heart to a place that was kind of like home but
also kind of not, I saw the beauty in searching
for a common denominator among the land,
its institutions, its people. And let’s be clear: I’d
rather die than chum it up with someone who
refuses to denounce racism and sexism and all of
the bad things that have found footholds in the
South. But Madison County, Appalachia, the
deepest parts of the South — they contain some
of the most empathetic and kind people I’ve ever
met, and, yes, some of them were devout white
Christians without college degrees, who lived in
double-wides and loved fishing and farming, and
they were fucking awesome.
I can’t say I’d ever place roots in
Madison County — I don’t think its vastness
could contain me. What I can say is that I miss it
like hell, the fresh biscuits and the warm smiles,
and I miss feeling like I belong, if even in the
smallest way possible.
LEFT: TRAFFIC AND CONSTRUCTION NEAR TIMES SQUARE. OCTOBER 2018.