Meredith McCarroll is the author of "Unwhite: Apppalachia, Race, and Film" (University of Georgia Press) and is co-editor with Anthony Harkins of "Appalachian Reckoning: A Region responds to 'Hillbilly Elegy.'" (West Virginia University Press).The views expressed in this commentary are her own. View more opinion at CNN .

Mountaineers.

Hillbillies.

Folks from Appalachia have been called a lot of things and often by people who flitted through long enough to find a well-rutted road, film a child on a porch with a dirty face, snap a shot of coalminers leaving their shift, and then leave to tell the same story that drew them to the region in the first place. A story of a place that is both impoverished and inspiring. Or, in writer and TV host Anthony Bourdain's words, "heartbreaking and beautiful."

Appalachia was "discovered" first by ancient natives making their way from the west, and later (perhaps) by Hernando de Soto in the 16th century. The first gold rush of the 1820s, the copper mining of the 1840s, and the coal mining of the 1880s marked the first waves of extraction from the region by industrialists. But Appalachia has also been mined for images, and especially after President Lyndon Johnson launched the War on Poverty from a porch in Appalachia in 1964, this cycle has repeated itself.

Documentary has become another extractive industry with outsiders coming in to take what they need -- in this case a narrow image of a complex place. A scapegoat for the rest of the country. (For a recent example, see JD Vance's "Hillbilly Elegy" (2016) which traffics in tales and images of poverty, laziness, and self-abuse.)

So, a few years back -- when Anthony Bourdain headed to West Virginia to film in McDowell County -- in places like War and Welch, a lot of people who care about the state and the region braced for the next iteration of performative discovery. Still, most of us watched the episode, which premiered the 11th season of CNN's "Parts Unknown" in April 2018, only weeks before Bourdain's death that June.

Bourdain: The outsider who really listened

Parts Unknown ," which aired from 2013 to 2018, was premised on bringing inaccessible regions into the living rooms of viewers, and it does a hell of a job complicating our preconceived notions about places by tying together cultures that are misunderstood with their foodways and art and geography. Hearing that Appalachia was one of these places felt strange to me. It's not like it's a foreign land. Interstate 81 runs right through it.

Now maybe people Bourdain visited with in Korea Town and Detroit didn't feel as touchy about being seen in this way. But not many regions have meant to the rest of the country what Appalachia has. Not many regions have been represented in such a narrow and unchanging way. Appalachia does not need one more outsider to come in and tell our stories.

Yet, of course, we tuned in -- we prepared to watch as we had watched "Christmas in Appalachia," the 1965 documentary by the Office of Economic Opportunity, and "American Hollow," Rory Kennedy's 1999 feature documentary -- with that strange feeling of pride turned to instant shame. With a thousand exceptions and variations in mind for every image that seemed mined from the past. We watched ready to rant about this New Yorker coming into this so-called "part unknown," a place we had known all our lives.

When Bourdain opened the episode acknowledging his own position as a New Yorker going into the territory of the "existential enemy," my interest was piqued. When he said, "But this is not a poverty porn show. Do not pity the people here," I listened up. And when I recognized documentary filmmaker Elaine McMillion Sheldon , whose work explores America's opioid crisis and the future of Appalachia ,and Affrilachian artist and advocate Crystal Good on screen in the episode, I thought, "OK, this guy's done his homework."

When Bourdain asked questions, he actually listened to the answers -- you could see it. And his framing of the whole endeavor with an awareness that "it was always too easy to come gawk at West Virginia" went a long way toward countering the image we were expecting of a city boy coming in to eat squirrel and ask people how they could vote for Trump.

The Appalachian voices 'Hillbilly Elegy' left out

Throughout the show, we cut from a football locker room to a heritage farm to a strip club and a strip mine. In the first three minutes of the episode, Bourdain showed more diversity in West Virginia than many viewers would expect. Before he arrived, somebody on his team did a lot of digging and contacted some of the most active and engaged hillbillies out there. And once he is sitting in front of them, he has the good sense to ask the simple question: What should people know about this place?

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The answer he gets in the episode from Nick Mullins , who blogs as "The Thoughtful Coal Miner," is "How much the people in this area have been exploited." But Bourdain isn't a timber man or a coal company. He isn't strip mining or in with Big Pharma . Most of us aren't. But most of us don't like to see that we still are a part of those systems. Not only when we drive or fly. But also when we turn on our televisions to "gawk at" Borneo or Sri Lanka.

Exploitation takes many forms and serves multiple purposes. Anthony Bourdain seemed to understand that he was in a position where he could judge, make assumptions, and dismiss. But he was also in a position to learn, to hear, and to have his mind changed through deep empathy and curiosity -- which is what he chose to do.

When thinking about who gets to tell a story, a tired insider/outsider debate tends to come up. Maybe you have to be born and raised somewhere to speak about it. Like Elaine McMillian Sheldon with McDowell County or photographer Roger May with Charleston, West Virginia. Or maybe you can move to another Appalachian place and invest in it and help its stories find light. Like novelists Robert Gipe and David Joy . Or public historian Elizabeth Catte.

Maybe it is less about insiders and outsiders, and really comes down to empathy.

Bourdain's Appalachian empathy endures for the rest of us

J.D. Vance, raised in the Rust Belt with ties to Appalachia, rose to prominence with the publication of "Hillbilly Elegy" coinciding with (and enabling) his own political climb and birth as a venture capitalist. Vance uses the culture of poverty mythology to position himself as the hardworking one who escaped a dying place. Though he spent his summers in the region and has familial ties to Kentucky, Vance's view is judgmental more than empathetic.

But then what do you do with an insider like J.D. Vance who never learned to listen?

And what do you do with an outsider like Anthony Bourdain who did?

Throughout the episode, Bourdain authentically inserts his own voice. After acknowledging that he loves blowing things up, shooting pumpkins filled with explosives and sharing a venison burger with young gun enthusiasts (one of whom has an AR-15 tattoo on her arm), Bourdain pushes back. He points out that, despite his easy conversation over a sunset meal with these people with guns, not all people with guns are good.

As he speaks his mind to his companions, the show cuts from the picturesque meal to footage of mass shootings in Parkland, Florida, and Las Vegas.

When he talks with a Trump supporter, Bourdain asks how he could vote for someone so disconnected from the working class. When he joins a family for dinner, he asks both what is the best thing about living in West Virginia and what is the worst. He shares bear meat deep in a mine and listens to miners hope that their children find different work.

He wonders why no one is talking about money as he enjoys foraged ramps with farmers and artists at Lost Creek Farm. Though he talks back, he doesn't have to have the final word.

To Anthony Bourdain, Appalachia was a part unknown. But because he asked questions, he listened to answers, and he entered with empathy, he came to know one small corner of Appalachia.

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I was on a plane when news of Bourdain's suicide hit. As we landed and cell phones came off airplane mode, his name was quietly spoken. With surprise. With question. "How could he kill himself?" I heard someone ask with the same lack of thought that I've been asked, "How could anyone live there?" As if depression -- of a person or of a region -- is a thing you should (or could) just walk away from. As if some laziness allows it to take root, and some determination would be enough to change systems -- neurological or capitalist.

A television show can only do so much. But this one might help us think about the danger of assumptions and it could remind us of the power of empathy. At any rate, Bourdain did a good enough job that all of the Appalachian folks I know, many of whom were ready to defend our strange land from the outsider, thought he did a good job. It's praise not easily won.

Bourdain managed to give viewers a full and rich depiction of a place that is both heartbreaking and beautiful -- like life anywhere, if you're the kind of person who is smart enough to listen, brave enough to taste, and open enough to feel.