Barbara Kingsolver didn't realise the world thought she was a hillbilly until she left home to go to university.
The bestselling author of The Poisonwood Bible was raised in Nicholas County, Kentucky, in the Appalachian region of the United States, home to a largely white and disproportionately poor population often derided by outsiders as hillbillies — or, in the words of Demon Copperhead, the titular young protagonist of Kingsolver's latest novel: "Rednecks, moonshiners, ridge runners, hicks. Deplorables."
Growing up, Kingsolver was familiar with the depictions of this social class popularised by the 60s sitcom Beverly Hillbillies: "Ignorant idiots who hold our jeans up with a rope and have a pig in the house for a pet and shoot the neighbour's lights out if they're bothering us," as she explained on ABC RN's The Book Show.
