Satterwhite, Emily M.2025-01-312025-01-312022-07-012168-0604https://hdl.handle.net/10919/124461Literary historians note that Jesse Stuart’s impetus for his satirical portrait of a hill-country clan in his 1943 novel Taps for Private Tussie was his scorn for government aid. Close readings support a common interpretation of the cultural work performed by the novel: that it ridicules the Tussie clan and links welfare programs to laziness. A reception study of Stuart’s archived correspondence, however, indicates that Stuart’s fans read his characters as pastoral, authentic, and endearing. Readers’ bemused and antimodernist appreciation for white hill people, understood as a category apart, transpired as part of Americans’ imaginations of race and poverty and attitudes toward public policy. In some cases, readers’ jealousy of the Tussies hint at an anti-capitalist stirring. Insights drawn from a combination of close reading, reader reception analysis, and attention to public policy over time suggest just how much the study of fiction and its audiences matters.Pages 61-88application/pdfenIn Copyrightliterary reception studieswelfarepovertyJesse StuartAppalachian fictionArticle - Refereedhttps://doi.org/10.5325/reception.14.1.006114Satterwhite, Emily [0000-0002-6799-3911]2155-7888