book review: Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis is a memoir by J. D. Vance
I picked up this book with apprehension and curiosity. With an interest in what ‘small town America’ thinks, I hoped this book will help me see beyond my disconnect from those who elected Trump. Hillbilly Elegy didn’t provide me that insight but it was able to humanize those who live so close to me and yet are so far away in ideology.
“There is a cultural movement in the white working class to blame problems on society or the government, and that movement gains adherents by the day.”
This account of J.D. Vance’s life revolves around his family, their struggles and his story of growing up with conflict of values, faiths, cultures and relationships around him. The book starts as a narrative of his family history but you soon realize this is more than just one family. This is about how this community underwent change and the consequence of it.
Throughout the book you feel like you are right there with JD as he goes through ups and downs of his mother’s various partners, addiction and growing up in a family where the meaning of violence is often interchanged with honor. He is also able to beautifully lure you into the happy times of his life, whether through the portrait of his colorful Mawmaw, his sister or his wife.
If you have had conflict in your relationships — whether big or small — you will associate with JD’s attempt to sift through these relationships to have a semblance of normal life. His writing style is straightforward and easy and that goes very well with the story he is telling.
“But yeah, like everyone else in our family, they could go from zero to murderous in a fucking heartbeat.”
There is a lot of dichotomy in JD’s life. Where he is from and what he has gone to become are two very different things and yet you find a surreal symmetry in it. I started reading this book as a way to understand why the conservative America is fighting and blaming immigration for all their problems, when this is a country of immigrants. The fact that JD goes on the marry an immigrant from India makes one feel again how this isn’t a simple problem.
“What separates the successful from the unsuccessful are the expectations that they had for their own lives. Yet the message of the right is increasingly: It’s not your fault that you’re a loser; it’s the government’s fault.”
JD is able to speak against his own people and community with the eye of an insider and you have to respect him for that. Yet sometimes you can’t help but feel that he refuses to see how privileged he and his community are. Yes the book is critical of those who refuse to work hard to earn a fair wage. Yet the fact that the community has the option to sit back and rely on social security, often times funded by the hard working immigrant community’s taxes seems to be a fact not mentioned. JD or his old school Mawmaw don’t support those who don’t work hard. Yet how a community comes to believe in a sense of entitlement is not talked about with much detail.
“whenever people ask me what I’d most like to change about the white working class, I say, “The feeling that our choices don’t matter.”
I did enjoy this book for many reasons and would recommend you give it a read. But at the same time, this isn’t an answer to the kind of questions I had about small town America. This is after all just one person’s account and although the title is self proclaiming to talk about an entire culture, I would recommend you take that bit with a grain of salt.
Overall rating: 3/5
Addition: if you read the book, read the recent article by JD on why he is moving home.