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

I started a review of this book, but it stalled out for a while. After the Washington Post opinion piece and Ta-Nehisi Coates's Atlantic essay, I feel like it's a good time to talk about it.

What worked for me: Vance has a good deal of self-awareness regarding the hillbilly aspect of his background. He offers details unflattering to him and his family, increasing his credibility in my eyes. He offers another perspective that is at times baffling to me (“As a child, I associated accomplishments in school with femininity”), but useful to know exists. As a teacher, I did appreciate Vance's insight into how difficult it is for kids to have success in school when their home lives are working against what the school is trying to do.

Vance became a conservative in part, I infer, from seeing social welfare being abused. While in the big scheme of things, a century's worth of misused food stamps is completely dwarfed by the amount of money illegally and immoral taken by wealthy financiers a decade ago in the lead-up to and aftermath of the financial crisis, I think the lesson is this: perception of fairness matters. When I used to work retail, at a time when people had physical food stamps (like currency), a person might come in and make several transactions buying 25 cent bags of Cheetos with the $1 food stamp bill. Any change under $1 was returned to the customer in regular coins, not food stamps. A few transactions like this, and the person would buy cigarettes. From me, the same clerk who sold all the Cheetos. Now rationally, a few bucks misused isn't making much of a different in the U.S. budget, but the observer of the person abusing the food stamp system is not reacting rationally, and I think advocates for the poor need to keep that in mind.

Eyebrow-raising things in the conservative world of this book: he alludes to future wife Usha behaving like an “Ayn Rand heroine” as if we're all familiar with what that is. He cites Bell Curve author Charles Murray (mentioned in Coates's essay, not in a positive way) as a source of wisdom. “Fox News...has always told the truth about Obama's citizenship status and religious views,” write Vance. (Rebuttal from Media Matters.)

As Coates described, it's all about race. And yet, Vance appears to embrace a “color blind” philosophy. He is definitely not woke, to use the parlance of our times. “[Obama] conducts himself with a confidence that comes from knowing that the modern American meritocracy was built for him,” says Vance. “Holy shit” reads my note on the highlight of this quote. This isn't just turning a blind eye to the effect of race, it's actively asserting, essentially, that racism is not a thing in modern America. His description of meeting his future wife, Usha, raised my eyebrow. Never in the book does it mention her race or ethnicity. (She's Indian-American.) His immediate obsession (“After a few weeks of flirtations and a single date, I told her that I was in love with her. It violated every rule of modern dating I'd learned as a young man, but I didn't care.”) with her combined with her non-white name creates a story in my mind of a naive white man falling hard for the “exotic” (“She seemed some sort of genetic anomaly” writes Vance) woman. Not sure how he knows her a year before finding out she's single.

“[Obama] feels like an alien to many Middletonians for reasons that have nothing to do with skin color,” says Vance. Ta-Nehisi Coates begs to differ.

Now that so many people are suddenly interested the white working class, J.D. Vance seems to have a knack for timing. But coming from rural Maine - another area of multigenerational rural poverty and little economic opportunity - I have always felt that our policy and discourse has let down, if not completely ignored, people from places like Appalachian Kentucky where Vance's family is from. Vance does an excellent job weaving sociological research in with his family's experiences, providing a touching portrait of a family struggling in the face of poverty, addiction, and trauma. This book expresses empathy for people facing so many structural barriers to their success, but it is also critical of the bitter defeatism and xenophobia that many in this setting have embraced.

Obviously the author had a harrowing childhood, but I don't get why this book is so popular. It reminds me of Faye Dunaway in Chinatown - “She's my sister. She's my daughter...” I hate my mother. I love my mother. I hate my family. I love my family. It's like an endless circle. Plus, he doesn't seem to really make clear exactly what the problem is that needs to be fixed.

Less prescriptivist than most (to it's benefit), Hillbilly Elegy uses the saga of one Kentucky family to explain the societal pressures, pitfalls and opportunities (or lack thereof) faced by working-class whites. Surprisingly objective for a pseudo-memoir, Vance's appraisal of the sources of strife as multifaceted ring truer than most attempts to simplify it to “government,” “personal choice” or “culture” - all of which undoubtedly play a large role, but never an all-encompassing one. And despite a pretty dire personal narrative, the unique handholds in life that offered the author an opportunity to hold on and propel himself out of a bad situation undergird the book with an oddly uplifting, optimistic feeling even when at its darkest moments.

This book has given me lots to think about and for that alone I really like it. Some of what Vance has to say about how his family spent money vs how money is spent in the culture he adopted in law school reminds me a lot of “Rich Dad, Poor Dad”. While I have not lived through the chaos he describes, I feel that I've been adjacent to it and there are certainly elements that resonate deeply with me.

I need to read more criticism about the book. I read it because it was recommended by many but after reading it I'm wondering what they took from it.... I feel that it kinda explains some of the pessimism of “Trump Country” but I also think it points to the naiveté and arrogance of liberal policies and interpretations of these communities.

This is a story that I understand. I haven't lived it, but I have lived beside it. This is a voice that is needed to understand what is going on around us. There are no easy answers, but just sitting and listening to the story is a start.
But you have to wade through some huge assumptions by the author. So it is not as good as it could be.

I think I wish Vance had set out to write a true memoir. Hillbilly Elegy is at its best in those autobiographical moments – you really feel for teenage Vance, his poor sister/surrogate-mother and his matriarch figure of a grandmother. Many memoirs increase their narrative power by adding analysis, but in Vance's case, I think the result is less than the sum of its parts. When he switches to political or socioeconomic commentary he takes an extremely preachy tone, which I think is not necessarily warranted by the narrative.

Although I would consider this book a four-star work (all for the memoir portions), three sentences really detracted for me. It's highly unusual for me to have such a visceral reaction to a single sentence, much less more than once in a book, but here we are:

1. In the very beginning (and then repeatedly throughout), Vance talks about how “Hillbillies” are culturally distinct from African Americans as a way of justifying their poverty behavior, but not that of African Americans...and then thoroughly fails to prove that. Through years of serving the poor urban African American population as a physician, I found everything Vance talked about as unique to Appalachian whites to resonate about the subset of poor, urban African Americans well. I think the two populations are extremely similar in their Protestant ethics, historic participation in the labor portion of the workforce and disenchantment with the American Dream. I don't know why this bothers me so much, except that it really smacks of White exceptionalism – even when we're poor, we're special!

2. Vance talks about how patriotic he is and then says essentially that no one on the “Acela corridor” would ever understand that feeling. First of all, the generalization that the Acela corridor is all wealthy, white liberals needs to stop – I meet plenty of disadvantaged people right here in my Acela-ified city. But secondly, OK, I'm white, I'm Jewish, I've never been working class in my life, I went to a hippy liberal arts college and I'm a doctor, so I'm the epitome of the Acela corridor and I think I've figured out patriotism just fine, thanks.

3. He talks about the loss of American heros. True, the days of astronauts and politicians being the heros instead of teenybopper singers and actors are over (assuming the past was ever truly like that.) but then he brings up Obama. To me, Obama is the American hero of our generation – a brilliant, charismatic, young president, who pulled the economy out of a death spiral, brought healthcare to millions, brought about the legalization of gay marriage, doubled the number of female supreme court justices in the history of the country and did it all while keeping his nose incredibly clean. To Vance, Obama is an “alien.” Not because he's black, Vance hastens, but because he's well-spoken and highly educated. Yes, this is the complaint of someone who less than 50 pages prior said that what the Appalachians need is an American politician hero. But, apparently not a well-spoken, highly-educated (black) one. If you think there's racism between those lines, well, I'm with you.

I kept wondering if I'd cut Vance more slack if I didn't know that he was a Republican, but the fact of the matter is that overall, I felt like he didn't read between his own lines. He talks about his understanding of learned helplessness, but then is dumbfounded when his neighbors won't commit to jobs. He talks about how he believes culture drags down everyone in it, but then says that he thinks the best that can happen is placing a thumb on the scale for disadvantaged kids, rather than the evidence-based practices, like housing-first that's been shown to intervene on culture.

It's not all bad – some of Vance's comments are both critical and point out a recurrent problem I see in my own larger community: especially an unawareness of need-based aid for college by those who actually need it and the way that community college and other less prestigious institutions often cost more, rather than less for the working class and come with less of the unwritten benefits. Overall, I found Vance bracingly honest and reflective about his own experience growing up in the working class, but I wish he would think about generalizing his experience beyond the Appalachians.

I've noticed this book on a number of “must read” lists regarding “understanding the Trump victory.” Also, I heard the author on a few podcasts and was fascinated by his story. His engaging, fast-paced, funny and insightful memoir did not disappoint me. Although I live in Central Ohio, his description of the life and culture just to the south (in Kentucky) and to the west in Middletown (between Dayton and Cincinnati) was eye-opening. His thesis has stayed with me: While hillbilly life can be crazy and pridefully resistant to governmental “handouts,” everyone in this culture can use a “hand-up,” via strong, healthy, encouraging adult mentors like those that J.D. had growing up. Whether the anger and ills of the “white, working-class” can be solved this easily remains to be seen. Regardless, I am grateful for the illumination of this foreign (for me) culture presented by Vance.

This book has forever changed the way I see lower-class, white culture. There's no way to read it without empathy for the kind of life experiences that J.D Vance and his family have gone through - the traumatic childhood events that would shape his expectations for adult relationships. But Vance doesn't want us to think that it's a “cycle of violence” or a forgone conclusion. He believes low expectations and a learned hopelessness are also causes, and pouring outside help in the form of things such increased money for public schools won't help kids who don't have a room in their house where they can't hear screaming and fighting. He believes it has to be an internal change within the community, and attributes the changes in his own life to the love of his Mamaw and Papaw, and the examples of a few family members in positive relationships.

One aspect that I wish Vance would have touched on more is the harmfulness of an “honor” culture, where “yo mama” jokes actually start huge fights, and getting threatened with a shotgun is a real possibility. Besides the amount of time wasted in defending honor, it removes control in one's life. (At any moment, someone could insult you, and then you'd be obligated to beat the crap out of them.) Vance mentions his new spouse helping him learn not to get of out of a car to confront the guy that cut him off, but it still seems like this is uncharted territory for him, and could perhaps deserve a closer look.

I read this book before his political foray, and this book made me realize, the apathy and doomerism so prevalent in Mexican politics is here in the U.S. too. I now understand why so many people don't vote. A life of no ambitions, past triumphs washed away, but also their leaders, who have forgotten of those who played a critical role in westward expansion.

A timely read that offers a unique view into the hillbilly mindset (and at times hit uncomfortably close to home). But it's ultimately lighter on the analysis than I had been led to believe from interviews with the author. I can see how/why many government programs aren't the answer to Appalachia's woes but would have liked more insight into how we can “put a thumb on the scales,” as the author put it. Without more concrete ideas about this, it left me feeling pretty pessimistic about US culture in general.

I got an ARC of this book at BookExpo last year, read a few pages, and passed on it. Then came the rave reviews. Darn, I thought, and I put myself on the hold list at the library. #58, or something ridiculous like that. I'd check every few days, but the list really didn't seem to move much. Weeks went by. Months went by. Finally, last week the book finally came in.

Was it simply that anticipation built up my expectations? I don't know, but I walked away from this book thinking it was just another sad family story. J. D. Vance made good from an awful childhood, and that's something, but honestly the chief draw is the druggie mom and a succession of dad and dad surrogates. I must live in a hillbilly enclave; I see these sorts of families all around me in struggling-white-America. Relationship mistakes. Limited employment options. Too many kids to properly care for. A sad story, yes, but I would have wished for a bit more time to have passed so that our author was able to reflect more and write better.

I didn't care much for this book. Most memoirs are self-indulgent to a certain extent, but this one I found painfully so. He knows that he was lucky to “escape” the hillbilly culture, although I'm not sure he really has. Furthermore, he doesn't seem to realize that the permanent underclass, including hillbillies, are useful tools of our society, and have always existed. Don't waste your time with this book. Instead, read WHITE TRASH, THE 400 YEAR HISTORY OF CLASS IN AMERICA by Nancy Isenberg, which is a more objective study of the subject. Vance also glosses over the problem of race in the community he comes from, and that cannot be ignored. (He betrays his own attitudes by seemingly blaming Barack Obama for being too smart, too well-dressed, etc., to appeal to the hillbilly population, even though BO also came from humble beginnings. That doesn't ring true.)

This did not live up to its hype.

The story of someone who managed to transcend his white trash upbringing that includes a gun-toting grandma that once poured gasoline on his grandfather when he came home drunk once too often - then lit it, to his drug-addicted, 5-time married mother who once begged her own son for clean urine.

But it's thanks to the love of that same grandmother and some key mentors in his life, not to mention his time in the military that saw him graduate Yale Law and become a principal in a San Francisco tech-venture fund.

But Vance never comes off as boastful. It's not a “Look at how successful I've become” story. He's more an embedded journalist that lived for years amongst the disenfranchised, white trash, hillbillies. He shines a light on their learned helplessness and massive blindspots. He talks of folks blaming Obama for their jobless state but seeing them quit jobs because of the inconvenience of getting up early.

Meanwhile Vance's mind is blown at the sheer wealth of opportunity afforded him by simply being white and at Yale. A set of rules that was completely invisible to him before, opens doors effortlessly. He doesn't discount his own work and determination but he knows how lucky he's been.

Memoirs, in general, are not something I'd read. Someone loaned me this book after they really enjoyed it so I read it. I don't think there's anything particularly 2-star worthy in this book. Its just that I don't enjoy reading these works. Hey, at least I can talk about it with the lender now and understand what's being discussed.