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

From a former marine and Yale Law School graduate, a powerful account of growing up in a poor Rust Belt town that offers a broader, 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 forty 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 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.

Book Review:

I was recommended this book by one of my high school teachers and mentors months ago but it never peeked my interest until I was looking for audiobooks to listen to over the course of two 5 hour bus rides one weekend. I found that Vance spoke to the truth that I lived as well. I grew up in a lower middle class family that fits the class of Hillbillies that he describes, but where I come from we call them Rednecks. He had a harder upbringing than I did. His father was only in the picture sporadically, his mother was addicted to drugs and the wrong type of men. His sister was his only constant for the majority of his life and most people, including himself, didn't believe that he would make it very far in life. Somehow, he defeated those odds and became a marine, went to Yale Law School, became a prominent lawyer, had a family of his own. 

I've had to overcome my own list of obstacles and his story of self-discovery, self-sabotage, and determination to grow depicts my story as well. He knows that he wouldn't have made it without his determination and work-ethic instilled in him by the Hillbilly culture but also knows that he wouldn't have made it without the various people who took an interest in him. I read this book at a time where I needed to feel like I wasn't alone in my story and this did that for me. 

Pages: 272                                                                                                                             Rate: 4/5

Favorite Quote:

“Today people look at me, at my job and my Ivy League credentials, and assume that I’m some sort of genius, that only a truly extraordinary person could have made it to where I am today. With all due respect to those people, I think that theory is a load of bullshit. Whatever”