by J.D. Vance
HarperCollins 2016
264 pages Memoir
I began seeing J.D. Vance on the news circuit in the weeks
prior to the election. He represented the white working class voters among the
pundits and the talking heads on CNN and explained to television audiences why
his "people" voted for Donald Trump. He was an eloquent spokesperson
for the conservative voters that the "liberal elite" have had a hard
time understanding. In an interview, he said, "for those of us lucky
enough to live the American Dream, the demons of a life we left behind continue
to chase us."
He begins Hillbilly Elegy by saying that he finds it ludicrous
that anyone would be reading his book, because he hadn't done anything
"great in his life." But those of us reading his book find that he
has done something quite remarkable. He has laid bare the life of the working
poor in a way that builds understanding and acceptance.
Vance grew up in Middletown, Ohio, just up the road from my
sister's house in West Chester, Ohio, but it might as well be a world away.
Vance's family moved en masse from Kentucky to work in the steel mills of
Middletown, making more money than they could have in the hills of Kentucky,
but then the jobs went away and misery ensued. The strong social ethic of the
hills stayed with those transplants, and that social ethic continues to be the
driving force in their lives.
Vance was raised by his grandparents and an older sister because
his mother couldn't get her life together enough to care for him. His
grandparents fiercely protected him, pushed him, prodded him, and threatened
him. “The statistics tell you that kids like me face a grim future — that if
they’re lucky, they’ll manage to avoid welfare; and if they’re unlucky, they’ll
die of a heroin overdose.” He nearly didn't graduate from high school, but following
graduation, he enlisted in the Marines and served in Iraq. Following his
military service, he attended Ohio State and Yale Law School. Today, at 31, he is a business executive, married and living
in Silicon Valley.
In Hillbilly Elegy, Vance tells the difficult story of his upbringing,
and as he probes for us (and even more
importantly, for himself) how he survived and figured out how to thrive, we
liberal intellectuals begin to understand how those people around us, like J.D.
and his family, came to feel disenfranchised and thus elected a billionaire
populist to the presidency. My husband said that the book helped him understand
why Michigan's rural areas went pretty solidly for Trump.
I asked my husband what he had learned from reading
Hillbilly Elegy. He said that he was struck by the intense loyalty Vance feels
for his family, for his grandparents (both now dead), for his sister, and even
for his drug addicted mother. My husband said he respected so much how Vance
could look beyond the pain of his upbringing to understand the circumstances
that caused it. For instance, Vance ponders how some members of his family
built stable families, held decent jobs, and maintained sound economic foundations, while his
mother floundered so badly. My husband inferred, however, that there is just as
much potential for painful upbringings in the lives of "so-called
intellectuals" as there is in the white working class.
At the same time that Vance speaks about how much he loves
his family, he is highly critical of those people who feel that they have
little control over their lives. He concludes: “I believe we hillbillies are
the toughest god----ed people on this earth. But are we tough enough to look
ourselves in the mirror and admit that our conduct harms our children? Public
policy can help, but there is no government that can fix these problems for us.
. . . I don’t know what the answer is precisely, but I know it starts when we
stop blaming Obama or Bush or faceless companies and ask ourselves what we can
do to make things better.”
My husband and I read Hillbilly Elegy aloud, and we like
everyone else we know who read it, greatly appreciated its lessons for us. We
highly recommend it for its readability and its life lessons. It is easy to see
why it has remained on the bestseller lists for so long.
Review in Washington Post.
J.D. Vance website.
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