"What it means to be Appalachian is to be in solidarity."

The Buzz Books team was so inspired by Beth Howard’s conversation with her editor Eric Kerl on our Spring/Summer ‘26 Nonfiction Panel that when Haymarket Books, Beth’s publisher, invited us to a lunch and longer conversation at their NYC office, we jumped at the chance.

Beth is the Cultural Strategist for Showing Up for Racial Justice (SURJ), the largest national organization bringing white people into the fight for racial and economic justice. She grew up in a rural white working-class community in Eastern Kentucky and has organized in the American South for two decades. Beth is the creator of the viral narrative campaign “Rednecks for Black Lives,” and you can find her on Substack at Working Class Love Notes.

In her memoir, Song for a Hard-Hit People: A Memoir of Antiracist Solidarity from a Coal Miner’s Daughter, Beth shares her story of growing up in Appalachian Kentucky—the economic struggles, trauma, and ever-present sexism along with the loving care of her close-knit rural community. These complex people shaped her sense of justice and solidarity, and taught her about the inextricable bonds working-class people share, despite our differences. But Beth’s childhood also left her with emotional wounds that threatened to destroy the life she built for herself. In her quest to understand her home and her people, she uncovers the powerful history of white Appalachians fighting alongside Black and Brown people, pushing back against billionaires who gain power by using racism to divide them. Appalachia, she realizes, has not only been hit hard; it is the place to wage a freedom struggle—a collective fight for a future where we all have what we need and deserve.

Attending the event at the Lannan Foundation offices, we were joined by many of the people who supported Beth’s publishing journey, as well as her accomplices in the fight for justice. In addition to Haymarket’s team, we met members of SURJ’s Kentucky branch, Cave Canem staff and more. Over a lunch of greens, cornbread, mashed potatoes, and fried fish, we discussed everyone’s journeys in social justice work (the number of people who said they started in 4H as a child was… not insubstantial!), building space and solidarity without major resources or trust in the system, and the power of unions—a theme that runs throughout Beth’s book.

The swag hand-printed by Black Gum Print Shop for Beth’s tour is a red bandana. A similar callback echoes in the cover design as well—honoring the Battle of Blair Mountain, the “largest multiracial uprising in our nation’s history,” as Beth put it, and the largest labor uprising in US history. The striking coal miners wore red bandanas as their identifier and gave rise to the term “rednecks,” a descriptor that’s been negatively twisted today.

In a ranging and powerful conversation with fellow forthcoming Haymarket author Morgan Bassichis, Beth discussed how one of the goals of her book was “to call my people into our dignity… what it means to be Appalachian is to be in solidarity,” and to show people everywhere what it means to truly work together to change the systems under which we all live. She spoke about how to find moments to connect and organize people, citing Kentucky’s lack of federal resources as a particular tragic opportunity. Flood relief, tornadoes, data center protests—when the government can’t or won’t intervene, everyday people can reach across their differences and make real change.

Beth stressed that so much of this coalition-building work is hard. If people only organize with those they agree with, each faction is just as divided against the ruling class as when they began. Organizers from Jewish Voices for Peace and Common Ground Kentucky spoke up as well, explaining, “Sure, you want to look good, but do you want to win?” as a mindset around pushing through fear in order to act, even if you aren’t entirely sure you’re ready. People enter solidarity spaces with good intentions even if they don’t yet have all the lingo, all the facts, and what’s key is to “Meet them where they’re at, but don’t leave them there.” To welcome, rather than purity test.

As Angela Y. Davis put it in her praise, “At a time when analysis is everywhere, and actual strategy is critically needed but hard to come by, Beth Howard's book gives us a road map to building the cross race, class solidarity we need to battle the rising authoritarianism of our times. In the best tradition of working class story telling, and with beauty, pain and inspiration, she takes us on her journey….This book will make you cry, laugh, think, and feel. But most of all, it will leave you hopeful."

To hear more from Beth in her own words, check out this IG post.

Find Beth on tour, which already included a packed event at NYC’s Housing Works, click here!