Preliminary Essay Assignment When looking at the novel Trampoline by Robert Gipe and other sources, including our guest speakers, Shannon Elizabeth Bell, Dr. Scott, and some notes that we took in class discussing the local citizens fight for rights against the big coal companies. I see negative stereotypes, such as drug use, the lack of education, and poverty, that are often brought onto the region and Trampoline solidifies these stereotypes throughout the entire book, it adds onto the assumptions people have about those that live in the Appalachian. But I do believe the speakers are showing an act of good citizenship that the novel does not provide, by discussing the laws and rights citizens have fought for to improve there communities.
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This book is centered around Dawn Jewel, a 15-year-old girl growing up in Eastern Kentucky. It illustrates the many challenges a young lady growing up in the region would but seems to extremely over exaggerate the issues to the most extreme. The novel is set in a poor community that details bad living conditions and a failing schools system. The novel details Dawn being pressured into doing drugs before school, skipping school, fighting, and stealing cars. These details are exactly what I think of when I think of people from the Appalachian region, so this novel made my assumption even more instilled than what they were before. One part of the novel that really caught my attention was when Dawn first walked into her school; she described it as a prison where kids were all uninterested and didn’t care at all about school. Dawn gets in a fight with her brother and the two are told to leave school. This just puts an image in my mind and probably the minds of everyone else around the country that these kids don’t care one bit about school and they won’t ever make it out of their situation they are in and are content with their way of life. This book overall was just not an act of good Appalachian citizenship in my eyes because I felt it did nothing to help or shed a positive light upon the
This book is centered around Dawn Jewel, a 15-year-old girl growing up in Eastern Kentucky. It illustrates the many challenges a young lady growing up in the region would but seems to extremely over exaggerate the issues to the most extreme. The novel is set in a poor community that details bad living conditions and a failing schools system. The novel details Dawn being pressured into doing drugs before school, skipping school, fighting, and stealing cars. These details are exactly what I think of when I think of people from the Appalachian region, so this novel made my assumption even more instilled than what they were before. One part of the novel that really caught my attention was when Dawn first walked into her school; she described it as a prison where kids were all uninterested and didn’t care at all about school. Dawn gets in a fight with her brother and the two are told to leave school. This just puts an image in my mind and probably the minds of everyone else around the country that these kids don’t care one bit about school and they won’t ever make it out of their situation they are in and are content with their way of life. This book overall was just not an act of good Appalachian citizenship in my eyes because I felt it did nothing to help or shed a positive light upon the