Where’s your accent?

I was born in raised in Louisville, Kentucky with family all over the state, from eastern Kentucky hollers to western Kentucky suburbs. I moved to Los Angeles in 2017 where the question about my accent quickly followed the question where I was from. It’s true that in Los Angeles you can safely assume most people you meet were born and raised somewhere else. This fact stings for my Angeleno friends, their homeplace and city an onslaught of transplants seeking success and opportunity. And there I was, a transplant seeking success and opportunity. So, when I was freshly settling into LA in 2017, a typical dialogue would sound like this:

Person: Where are you from?

Me: Kentucky!

Person: Ooooh, woooow, but you don’t have an accent…?

Me: I’m from Louisville, it’s the big city.

Person: What’d you say? Loo-ee-vul? Say it again!

After a handful of these exchanges, I learned to sum it all up quickly after the first question. In the same way that you learn to quickly explain away question you get all the time and don’t find interesting to answer anymore. Now that I’m living in Sacramento, it’s now:

Person: Where are you from?

Me: I’m from Louisville, Kentucky. It’s a big city and reminds me a lot of Sacramento. Lots of art, diverse cultures, a river going through it.

Then, Person will say something like: Oh, I was wondering why you didn’t have an accent.

Then, I get to say something like: Yup, anyway…

It’s not that I’m uninterested in talking about my home state of Kentucky. I love talking about its lush greenness, the interdependent communities freckling the state, the relationship between Big Coal and the rest of us. But the conversation analyzing how I speak is a slippery slope, and some folks in Los Angeles would slip down that slope! As in asking me to say something in a “Kentucky accent,” which happened once in an all-hands meeting at my new job. I was a brand new assistant at a literary agency and after I introduced myself to the staff of several dozen posh agents, my identity was reduced to whatever funny thing I could quickly think of to say in an accent. I don’t even remember what it was. I do remember feeling like I made a fool of myself, and mocked my family in a way.

My family has Southern accents, twangs and drawls and molasses-like intonations. I love the way they speak, and I love hearing the accent randomly out and about and then going hunting for whoever was talking. Finding Kentuckians in California is a special treat. The accent reminds me of home, in the same way smells and music do. After the all-hands meeting, I was in the staff kitchen and an assistant walked up to me to introduce himself. Or, really, to size up his competition for the inevitable promotions that come around to assistants. He asked me where I had gone to school, I said “UK” and he said “Cambridge?” and I laughed and said “no, the University of Kentucky” and he said “Wow, you must know people then!” and then sauntered out. A full minute passed before I realized what he was implying that to get this job I must’ve known someone, not based on the merit of my own work. My new work nemesis was born, and I learned that I had to say “the University of Kentucky” and not “UK” in Los Angeles. This guy later was fired from the agency, so don’t feel too bad.

What I took, and take, more offense to is when people use the words hillbilly, hick, or redneck with ease to classify people of Kentucky. This happened a fair bit in early interactions with folks in Los Angeles, and often it’d be the same people who asked me to perform in an accent. Now that I’m in Sacramento and surrounded by more people who have both feet planted on the ground, this happens less. One time I told someone in Los Angeles that I had family from Appalachia, and she said “oh, hillbillies!” as if she had been waiting to say the word. “Oh, hillbillies!” in the way you say “Oh, llamas!” when you surprisingly see a llama ranch on a car ride, or “Oh, turtles!” when you’re sitting by a pond and realize three turtles are watching you from across the bank. She was so excited to use the word. “Oh, hillbillies!” And… I just think, in general, reducing an entire population of people down to a term that they may not call themselves is… bad! Just my opinion!

This is a small slice of a larger conversation of how we learn who other people are, share compassion, and move with intention. Kentucky cannot be boiled down to my impression of my granny hollering at us from the kitchen; Appalachia cannot be summarized as a place brimming with hillbillies, hicks, or rednecks. While some people may want you to think that to buy their books/watch their Netflix movie/vote for them in the 2024 presential election, a place is best described by the folks from there. As a Kentuckian with Appalachian roots myself, my journey has been pockmarked with moments of shame, grief, and (yes) pride in my home state. So when I see folks claim that same heritage, get seated in state senates, then pivot and push for legislation that fundamentally hurts the very people they once claimed is… I don’t know… morally disgusting.

Listen, all I’m asking is to practice kindness and thoughtfulness. And, ya know, listen to Appalachian artists. If you’re curious, here are a few films, books, and essays that make me feel inspired to keep talking about this:

• Stranger With A Camera, a documentary by filmmaker Elizabeth Barret about the 1967 murder of a filmmaker by his Appalachian subject

• Y’all Means All, an anthology edited by scholar-activist Z. Zane McNeill of gorgeous and wild writing by, for, and about Appalachia

• ‘Hillbilly’ Women Will Get No Help From J. D. Vance, a poignant essay by Kentucky state senator Cassie Chambers Armstrong

• Hillbillies Need No Elegy, a zipping essay by Appalachian writer Meredith McCarroll