Whistlin' and Crowin' Women of Appalachia Response

Well, we finished reading Whistlin' and Crowin' Women of Appalachia a few days ago and I've had some time to reflect back on  what it means, how it pertains to my life and what to get out of the book. The most important thing I have gotten from this story is we need to stop the stereotyping  It's just not right, we as humans have no right to go around and make fun of others because of the way they are raised or the way they live their life. Sure it may be a little different than ours but that gives us no right to go and poke of another. Sohn's text focused most importantly on these women going back to college and getting their degrees and that's all well and good but that's not what really interested me the most. What interested me the most throughout this text was our class discussions on stereotypes and relating it to Sohn's text of course. In America stereotyping has come a long way, as of today we do not see as much stereotyping as in the past, but its still there. I do agree with Renee Middleton's argument that in order for it to come to an end it needs to stop within us first. We can't go around yelling at other people to stop stereotyping if we can't do it ourselves. The one way to do that is when you're about to stereotype someone or make fun of someone just stop and think, would I really want someone to be doing this to me? or my family and friends? I guarantee the answer's probably going to be no. So before we go stereotyping others we need to start with ourselves. 

I do believe that Sohn has constructed a great study about Appalachia and these women but I'm not sure if it's the best study out there. One thing that really bothered me the most about her work was she didn't include the original conversations exactly how she heard them. How are we as the reader supposed to truly understand and get a grasp of the situation if we are not being exposed to it. By Sohn editing out a lot of the conversation and converting it to somewhat normal english she is taking away from who they women really are. How are we really supposed to get a true understanding and feel for what it's like. I think that Sohn wanted us to get a grasp for what these women sounded like and for why they were being stereotyped but how can we do that if they sound just like you and me? That was my biggest issue with Sohn's text, not truly showing who these women are. Aside from that I thought the book was great.