This is not another glowing review of the universally-praised Hillbilly Elegy, J.D. Vance’s first-hand account of the problems facing the white working-class in Appalachia and the Rust Belt. Not because I don’t like the memoir—along with apparently everyone else who has read it, I found the memoir engaging and hope that it redirects our national policies. But to recognize just how original Hillbilly Elegy is means knowing how other popular literature often depicts Vance’s subject matter. Consider Jonathan Franzen’s 2010 novel Freedom, which emphasizes the supposedly violent racism of modern Appalachia.

An Oprah’s Book Club selection that counts Leslie Knope among its fans, Freedom includes scenes set in the mountains of West Virginia. The novel’s main character, Walter Bergland, travels there with his assistant Lalitha, a young “dark-skinned woman, slight of build and alluring of feature.” Because Walter is married (though not happily) and Lalitha has a serious boyfriend, they struggle to resist their attraction to each other. But when they get drunk and flirtatious at a restaurant in Beckley, a small town about 60 miles south of Charleston, they draw the attention of a local man—”white, thirtyish, with hard living in his face”—who confronts Walter in the restroom. He refers to Walter’s taste in “dark meat” and says, “I seen what you doing with that n—r girl.” (Lalitha is of Indian descent.) Walter escapes the bathroom without further incident, but later the ornery mountaineer pushes him against the wall calls him a “dark-meat lover,” a “f—ing spectacle,” and a “f—ing pervert.”