Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis

by J D Vance

THE INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER / OVER A MILLION COPIES SOLD

From Donald Trump's 2024 Vice-Presidential Candidate

‘Essential reading for this moment in history’ New York Times

‘Brilliant … offers an acute insight into the reasons voters have put their trust in Trump’ Observer

J. D. Vance grew up in the hills of Kentucky. His family and friends were the people most of the world calls rednecks, hillbillies or white trash.

In this deeply moving memoir, Vance tells the story of his family’s demons and of America’s problem with generational neglect. How his mother struggled against, but never fully escaped, the legacies of abuse, alcoholism, poverty and trauma. How his grandparents, ‘dirt poor and in love’, gave everything for their children to chase the American dream. How Vance beat the odds to graduate from Yale Law School. And how America came to abandon and then condescend to its white working classes, until they reached breaking point.

‘A beautiful memoir but it is equally a work of cultural criticism about white working-class America … Vance offers a compelling explanation for why it’s so hard for someone who grew up the way he did to make it … a riveting book’ Wall Street Journal

** Now a major-motion picture directed by Ron Howard and starring Amy Adams, Glenn Close, and Gabriel Basso **

• ISBN13: 9780008220563
• Publish Date: 1 June 2017 (first published 28 June 2016)
• Publish Status: Active
• Publish Country: GB
• Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
• Imprint: William Collins
• Format: Paperback
• Pages: 272
• Language: English
• URL: http://harpercollins.co.uk

Reviews

An interesting, and often times heart wrenching, look into a segment of society oft overlooked. I'd recommend this book to anyone who doesn't personally know someone who could have been featured or mentioned in this book. While I think the author is at times a little on the nose with his political leanings, the opening chapters really give you a good sense of what his life was like. I can understand why people would mention it in the same sentence at Ta-Nehisi Coates' Between the World in Me, as they are both stories of people's often fraught lives, but I don't totally feel comfortable conflating these two. A good read nonetheless and one that reminds me of the broader society we live in.

[Heather]

Wow.  I read this book in one sitting.  I spent the whole time nodding my head.  I got out of bed to start writing this to make of the thoughts flying around my brain.  Before reading the book I had heard that it was controversial.  After reading it I have no idea why.

This is the story of most of the people I know.

I've often summed up my husband and I like this:

• My husband is what happens when you educate a hillbilly.


• I'm what happens when two educated hillbillies breed.

In my life I've lived in Western Pennsylvania, East Tennessee, Central Ohio, and Northeast Ohio.  I don't wander far from Appalachia.  Most white people I know have roots somewhere deeper in Appalachia.  I had never considered that the reason for this was a migration north of people from coal mining country to the industrial centers farther north in the 40s and 50s even though that fits part of my family history.

"It was not simply that the Appalachian migrants, as rural strangers 'out of place' in the city, were upsetting to Midwestern, urban whites.  Rather, these migrants disrupted a broad set of assumptions held by northern whites about how white people appeared, spoke, and behaved...the disturbing aspect of hillbillies was their racialness.  Ostensibly, there were of the same racial order (whites) as those who dominated economic, political, and social power in local and national arenas.  But hillbillies shared many regional characteristics with the southern blacks arriving in Detroit."

 

One of the author's central points is that one of the major problems facing people in these areas is a lack of imagination.  I may be an overly educated person but all my coworkers are not.  Most are high school graduates who never imagined going on to do any college or ever leaving their hometowns.  If no one you know ever leaves, how can someone even imagine that it is an option?  There needs to be people to model what healthy relationships look like or what steps you take to go to college in order for someone to aspire to that.  The author talks a lot about the very small worldview people have.  I keep threatening to buy a world map and teach geography lessons to my coworkers between appointments at work because not only can they not identify some cities as belonging in certain states, they can't identify certain names as belonging to real states.  They've never been there so why would they care?  They just shrug.

"It's not like parents and teachers never mention hard work.  Nor do they walk around loudly proclaiming that they expect their children to turn out poorly.  These attitudes lurk below the surface, less in what people say than in how they act.  One of our neighbors was a lifetime welfare recipient, but in between asking my grandmother to borrow her car or offering to trade food stamps for cash at a premium, she'd blather on about the importance of industriousness.  'So many people abuse the system, it's impossible for the hardworking people to get the help they need,' she'd say.  This was the construct she'd built in her head:  Most of the beneficiaries of the system were extravagant moochers, but she--despite never having worked a day in her life--was an obvious exception."

 

Oh yes.  I love that one.  I know people who have used every government program out there who expound at length about immigrants coming here and getting benefits that "hard working" Americans don't get.  I also found the discussion in the book about how people overestimate how many hours they work because they think they are more industrious than they are fascinating.  If they are working so hard (in their minds) and aren't getting ahead, obviously someone is out to get them.  I think this is a big part of the reason why I hate the terms 'working class' and 'working man'.  It is like the rest of us magically make a living by waving our hands and the money rains down from on high.

The author's story is rough. His mother was a drug addict with a never ending stream of boyfriends.  He found stability in his Memaw.  That wasn't a given because she was an incredibly unstable person who didn't model healthy living to her daughter.  She got herself together in her later years and was able to help her grandson.

I understood his story completely.  Everything that happens to him has happened to someone I know.  It hasn't all happened to the same person but there was nothing in his story that I haven't heard at least once from someone in casual conversation.  I kept pointing out parallels to my husband's life to him.  There is a passage at the end where he talks about his non-hillbilly wife being shocked that he had several bank accounts spread out in different banks.  He attributes that to a childhood habit of spreading out his money in several hiding places so no one in his house could steal it all at once.  I just handed the book over to the husband at that point.  One of the 'in case of death' paperwork things I keep meaning to do is to get him to write down all the banks he has accounts in.  I'm not talking multiple accounts in a few local banks.  I'm talking about small accounts in multiple states that he can't bring himself to close.

Some of the major criticisms of this book is the idea that the author hates poor people.  They accuse him of saying that he worked hard and got out so everyone should be able to pull themselves up by their bootstraps and do it too.  I feel like this a lot too.  I look at people and think, "You have all the opportunities in the world available to you.  You have people who are begging to help you and you just don't care."  Maybe that isn't the case in other poor communities but it is true here.  Kids graduate having never given a thought to what they want to do with their lives.  It isn't because no one ever asked.  It is just pessimism and lethargy.  I don't know how else to explain it.  They are smart and capable of doing more than scraping to survive in dead end jobs but it never seems to occur to them that there is more possible in life.

You see this dynamic in the author's life.  He acknowledges that he had good schools with caring teachers who couldn't help him learn because he was too preoccupied with the chaos of his home life.  His high school was poorly rated but he considered that to be at least partially due to a lack of student caring.  He talks about good teachers there too.  He talks about the programs that are available to help kids go to school but the pessimism of people may make them assume that there is no help available so they don't look for them.  The insularity of the group means that no one talks about family problems (until they are over) so people aren't getting help.  People are suspicious of outsiders so they don't believe anything an outsider tells them.  Change and hope need to come from inside the community.   

It seems like a lot of people wanted this book to explain Trump voters to them.  It has been touted as the book to read to understand "those people."  They are criticizing it for not explaining them.  It doesn't try to.  This is his story.  It doesn't have a political bent to it.  It was written before the current election.  People need to stop projecting what they want this book to be and see it for what it is.

 

 This review was originally posted on Based On A True Story

[Hillary]

OMG Y'ALL THIS BOOK!!! I will try to write a coherent review and stop gushing all over it. I was born and raised in southeastern KY in the heart of Central Appalachia. I was always an odd duck from the start. I loved books and writing. I would make up my stories and give them o people to read. I was lucky in that my family encouraged this. Also, I was born Profoundly Deaf. In Appalachian culture, that is a big disadvantage.  Luckily for me my mom and uncle were both college educated, so I did not fall through the proverbial cracks. My mom took me to the library, and I always had books to read. That in itself was an oddity. There were no bookstores in the area. Walmart had some books, but most were too poor to get them. My family made damn sure I had my books. I had always dreamed of being a writer, and I am today, but it was a hard road to get here.

Like the author I escaped along the hillbilly highway. I have settled in Cleveland Ohio. Yeah, I followed the highway to the end of it. Hee hee. The author is spot on so many things. I have often wondered if somehow I was misunderstanding some things but reading this book, I kept going YES YES YES ME TOO!!  I also had a tough as nails mawmaw who made damn sure that I stayed the course. She would check my homework first thing when I got home. When I later transferred to Ky School For the Deaf, she would check everything when I came home for the weekend. She taught me how to stand up for myself. She was a guiding point in my life.  After reading this book, I can appreciate her so much more. She is dead now, but she lived long enough to make damn sure that I would be successful.  I got and graduated with Honors from Gallaudet University in Washington DC. Like the author I had some difficulty getting there in high school, I was always in trouble until the last two years when I buckled down and gave it my all.

The author examines his life with his unstable mother and the effect that had on him. Reading this also made me appreciate my mother even more. She was stable, and there was no revolving door of men. Her sole focus was getting me to college. I did know people like the author and I have to admit that I never thought about the effect that it has on people. It made me think more deeply about the people that I knew in public school and why they did not make it out.

My favorite part was when he described what upward mobility was like. OMG, I could relate to so much. There were so may times I felt out of my element. At networking events, I would be standing in a corner gawking at all the fancy shit and not networking. I always felt like a fraud. I still do, to be honest. The first time I encountered the ten pieces of silverware, I was speechless. I mean seriously? Luckily I had a friend who explained everything. Dressing for upward mobility was a challenge. Back in the hills we just wear sweatpants or Wal-Mart jeans and a t-shirt. That don't cut it in the business world. The author is so right the upward mobility is a lifestyle change. Successful people eat differently, talk differently, dress differently, It has been a challenge. The toughest one was quitting smoking. Yeah, no one in the upper-class smokes. I started to feel embraced every time I had to take a cigarette break, so I quit. It has been tough. Especially when I go back home and I see everyone puffing on a cigarette.

People need to understand that upward mobility is not as easy as it seems. Like the author, I had people helping me every step of the way. My professors in college introduced me to people, taught me to network and all of that stuff. It seems that the people who make it have people helping them. You can't do it alone.

This is an important book. I want the whole damn world to read this book. The author explains spot on what it is like trying to bust out of poverty and the trials and tribulations of upward mobility. I am one of those who has "made it." I had the same help as the author did. I have traveled to Africa been to other countries, and I am living my childhood dream. I couldn't have done it without the help I have received.

Read this book... That is all I have to say.This review was originally posted on Adventures in Never Never Land

[dpfaef]

I am not really sure what to make of this book. I thought that it might be something different than what is was, simply the memoir of one young man's rise out of poverty. Mr Vance is obviously a very bright person, and he makes a solid case for the blight of the white working class in Appalachia.

The hillbillies of Appalachia have not cornered the market on poverty in America, George Packer's The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America tells us the same story which is effecting all of this country not just Appalachia.

What Mr Vance and others of his ilk don't want to hear is that the only way we will break this cycle is by becoming a Social Democracy.This review was originally posted on The Pfaeffle Journal