From a former marine and Yale graduate, a powerful account of growing up in a poor Rust Belt town that offers a broad, probing look at the struggles of America’s white working class.
Hillbilly Elegy is a passionate and personal analysis of a culture in crisis – that of white working-class Americans. The decline of this group, a demographic of our country that has been slowly disintegrating over 40 years, has been reported on with growing frequency and alarm but has never before been written about as searingly from the inside. J. D. Vance tells the true story of what a social, regional, and class decline feels like when you were born with it hung around your neck.
The Vance family story begins hopefully in postwar America. J. D.’s grandparents were “dirt poor and in love” and moved north from Kentucky’s Appalachia region to Ohio in the hope of escaping the dreadful poverty around them. They raised a middle-class family, and eventually their grandchild (the author) would graduate from Yale Law School, a conventional marker of their success in achieving generational upward mobility.
But as the family saga of Hillbilly Elegy plays out, we learn that this is only the short, superficial version. Vance’s grandparents, his aunt, his uncle, his sister, and most of all his mother struggled profoundly with the demands of their new middle-class life and were never able to fully escape the legacy of abuse, alcoholism, poverty, and trauma so characteristic of their part of America. Vance piercingly shows how he himself still carries around the demons of their chaotic family history.
A deeply moving memoir with its share of humour and vividly colourful figures, Hillbilly Elegy is the story of how upward mobility really feels. And it is an urgent and troubling meditation on the loss of the American dream for a large segment of the country.
Shines honest light on often forgotten group. Well written and heartfelt. I escaped inner city Baltimore (see The Wire) due to luck, the ability to do well in school and a few good teachers.Instead of trying to describe my early life to my family and friends, I will give them this book. Should be required high school reading. It seems that these days, the U.S. forgets that not all who live in poverty in the country are of color. Thank you, J.D.
An inside look at a world many of us know all too well…. I spent most of the last 2 days reading this book and I can’t stop thinking about it. I never heard of the author until I saw him on Morning Joe a few days ago but I looked him up and read several articles he wrote for various publications so I bought his book. He grew up in a family of what he describes as “hillbillies” from Kentucky but spent most of his life in Ohio. His family identified as being strongly Christian even though their behavior was frequently not particularly…
An edifying and inspiring, if also troubling at times, read. There is a lot to take in here, even for someone that’s seen this life up close in many of its many guises.Â