My story is one of redemption and hope. Eastern Kentucky can have one, too.
Alan Maimon’s “Twilight in Hazard: An Appalachian Reckoning” takes us through Maimon’s time in Hazard working for The Louisville Courier-Journal. Maimon shows his readers, from an outsider’s viewpoint, drug abuse, mental health issues, litter, corrupt politics. I’ll be the first to admit Maimon hits the nail on the head about what’s wrong in Eastern Kentucky. I’m not one for sugar coating problems, but when do progress and perseverance become newsworthy?
Maimon’s primary focus is 2000-2005, the years he worked in the region, but the reader also gets snippets of present-day challenges and opinions as described by current residents. My bookstore, Read Spotted Newt, gets a mention, not for its contribution to a thriving downtown revitalization effort, but because of our first year’s setbacks due to COVID-19 and flooding.
While Maimon was in Eastern Kentucky covering the opioid epidemic in 2002, I was living it. Had he interviewed me then, he would not recognize me today. Few would have believed I’d be a business owner, mother, wife, board member, literacy advocate, and nature enthusiast. Based on preconceived notions of addicts, most would guess I’d be dead or in jail.
I was 17 when I met OxyContin. I was class vice-president, a National Honor Society member, and had signed a letter of intent to play collegiate tennis. At the same time, I was socially awkward, full of teenage angst, and plagued by depression and anxiety. When we met, Oxy gave me a big warm hug. Oxy silenced the negative voices in my head, but it didn’t take long for that hug to feel like a vise I couldn’t escape. Oxy became the last friend I would make for eight years. All hopes of finishing college dissolved. All my life I was caring, dependable, and trustworthy. That disappeared. I cleaned out the pockets of everyone I knew to get a fix.
Eight years into my addiction, I decided to shed the adage once an addict, always an addict. I got clean and stayed clean. Maybe my staying clean was the stubbornness that people in central Appalachia are known for, or perhaps it was the group of recovering addicts that helped guide my way. Whatever the cause, my life today is busy, filled with running from here to there with my son and managing Hazard’s first independent bookstore, which I opened in 2020. It’s been a long road of hard work, perseverance, and a belief that my life could be different.
My story, like Hazard’s, could be told as one of redemption and hope. What Maimon does not show his readers are the five new businesses Hazard’s main street gained during the coronavirus pandemic. He does not show how a blighted downtown became a thriving gathering place for quilters, musicians, readers, and local food enthusiasts. He does not tell the story of how a local nonprofit raised almost 1.5 million aid dollars in 2020 after historic flooding put most of eastern Kentucky underwater.
Addiction is not unlike the barrage of other obstacles people in Eastern Kentucky have faced. In the early 19th-century, broad form deeds allowed coal operators to purchase a property’s mineral rights without buying surface land. in Red Fox, the place my family called home for seven generations, mining went on below our feet and created giant sinkholes that opened up and exposed the vast caverns left behind beneath our land.
Those sinkholes led to a mistrust of outsiders that was passed down for generations. Those sinkholes are part of why we feel this constant need to defend where we are from, to constantly fight a story not wholly ours.
There is love, history, and a sense of place deeply ingrained in us. It’s what keeps us here when others tell us to leave. We want to be the change we want to see. No politicians, left or right, can enact the change we need. We need to determine our own fate. People from our region must set the tone and establish our narrative.
What I see when I look at my community is a movement into Appalachia, a homecoming for some, a new place for others. I see young people who no longer equate success with geographical location. I see people who recognize the benefits of living a life off the beaten path. These are the stories that are hard for outside journalists to see in Appalachia.
We, as Appalachians, must share the good with the bad, the growth and the growing pains, the beauty and the scars. We must continue to fight and insist our voices be heard. We must educate those who haven’t been fortunate enough to experience the beauty of central Appalachia or the compassion and grit of its people. We need to amplify the voices saying improvements to infrastructure and support for those still living in the area are the best investments in a viable future for the next generation.
Taken by themselves, books like “Hillbilly Elegy” and “Twilight in Hazard” are detrimental to the efforts of folks like The Foundation for Appalachia Kentucky, The Appalachian Arts Alliance, small business owners, and artists who choose to stay and are committed to making a difference. Both have a basis in truth, but it is imperative we seek the whole truth.
Mandi Fugate Sheffel is the owner of Read Spotted Newt and a resident of Jackson, Ky.
