Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis by J. D. Vance

Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis by J.D. Vance

Read by J. D. Vance

Published June 2016 by HarperCollins

Source: audiobook checked out from my local library 

Publisher's Summary:

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 hopes 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, aunt, uncle, 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.

My Thoughts:

This book is on my Nook, where it has been for four years. Initially I was eager to read it. And then I began hearing some backlash about it. So I put it off. When I found it available on audio, I decided it was time to make my own decision about this book. More than a week after finishing the book, I'm still trying to decide how I feel about it. 

On the one hand, it's hard to discount Vance's perception of what life has been like in the Appalachia region for the past few decades. It's been his life; they are his people. He has watched the region turn from one that was overwhelmingly Democratic to one that is deeply conservative Republican. Economics have failed them. Business has failed them. The policies that were meant to help these people have failed them. But Vance is also willing to admit that some of what has happened to these people has to do with the kind of people they are - a people where the idea that being a "real" man is much more valued than being an educated one, a people prone to stay close to their own even when there are no opportunities for them. 

But...

Last year, I read a book (I wish I could remember which one it was) that theorized that Barack Obama's election as President may have harmed black people more than it helped them. The theory is that, rather than laud him as an exception of a person who was able to pull himself up, he became the guy who people used as the "if he can do it, anyone can do it and if you can't, then it's on you" shining example. 

Vance, while quick to admit that he is a rarity amongst his people, does seem to see that he may well be that kind of person for the Appalachian people. If a guy whose addict mother went from one man to another, who was poor for all of his life, who grew up in an area where education was not valued could pull himself up to become a Yale-education lawyer, well then, why couldn't the others? Is it their own fault  that they can't raise themselves up? 

Here's the thing about both of these guys - they both had a tremendous support system. While Vance's mother might have moved him from house to house as she brought "father" after "father" into his life, he had the stability of grandparents who were always there for him, who wanted more for him, and who took him in when life got too dangerous with his mother. His older sister and her husband and an aunt and her husband were also tremendous support and encouragement. He knows that he is blessed to have had that and might not be where he is today without it. He was also smart enough to know that he was not ready for college straight out of high school, took the lessons from the Marines that he needed to have to succeed beyond them, and a tremendous work ethic. 

Vance talks about "a broken connection between the world we see and the values we preach." If, for example, family is so important, then why are alcoholism and domestic violence so common and so expected? If they are such hardworking people, then why do so many of them choose not to work? Vance clearly loves these people and has a deep understanding of where they came from and what has happened to them from outside sources. But he is not entirely sympathetic and doesn't make excuses for them. 

And yet...

Despite the title's reference to a culture in crisis and Vance's exploration of the area he grew up in, this is primarily his memoir, the story of his family, his life, and how he pulled himself out of poverty. He loves his hillbilly roots and feels them keenly, even when he is trying to hide them. In that respect, I appreciated this book. And I appreciated that Vance doesn't look on these people with rose-colored glasses. But then, in some ways, I came away wishing that he did, if only just a little bit.