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

"There's something powerful about realizing that you've undersold yourself. That somehow your mind confused effort for a lack of ability." - JD Vance, Hillbilly Elegy

Now compare that with this:

"Failure is a feeling long before it becomes an actual result. It's vulnerability that breeds with self-doubt and then is escalated, often deliberately, by fear." - Michelle Obama, Becoming

It's not lost on me that I was reading both of these books at the same time and finding raw similarities with the struggles and experiences of Michelle Obama and JD Vance. It's interesting actually, how much in common poor white working class neighborhoods have in common with poor minority urban neighborhoods. This is something that was not lost on Vance, who says while he was in high school and college, would read books and studies on the problems of people living below the poverty line. And even though the books and studies focused on urban areas and struggles, he recognized and identified those issues even in his own life and community. That these two people, JD Vance and Michelle Obama, could grow up in under served and underrepresented neighborhoods, advance to Ivy League law schools (Yale and Harvard respectively) and come out with such divergent politics to solve the problems they identified in their communities is an interesting look at American politics and likely the role of race in modern America.

I was really intrigued reading Hillbilly Elegy. Let's not make a mistake in thinking that JD Vance is writing a book aimed at analyzing or solving the problems of white working class America. This is first and foremost a memoir. It seeks firstly to tell the story of JD Vance and his family. The struggles they endured and the legacy issues passed down for generations in his family. He struggled, he survived, he got out, and he was lucky. And he knows it. And there's something satisfying about that because he did work hard but he only knew what he knew. 

Unable to wade through the confusing and never ending trail of paperwork required to receive tuition assistance, Vance joined the Marine Corps and came out four years later smarter and more equipped to tackle the enrollment challenges of a four-year college. He also came out with a wider network of experience through support from his Marine Corps family. It really cannot be stressed enough that we don't know what we don't know and sometimes those barriers are the most important ones for people trying to rise up out of a terrible situation and cycle of poverty. 

Vance says, "Social capital isn't manifest only in someone connecting you to a friend or passing a resume on to an old boss. It is also, or perhaps primarily, a measure of how much we learn from our friends, colleagues, and mentors." The raw truth is that people who live in communities stuck in cycles of poverty, violence, drug abuse, etc. have very little social capital to make a change for themselves. And then are blamed for not taking advantage of opportunities they couldn't even begin to comprehend existed for them. 

I grew up only 18 miles from JD Vance's childhood hometown of Middletown, Ohio. I too referred to it as Middle-tucky. A derogatory term meant to express the lack of education or "sophistication" of the inhabitants. (What can I say, kids are assholes). And I know precisely the kind of lethargy surrounding communities that see no possibility of getting ahead, and so just stop trying. I don't have the answers on how to fix that, and neither does Vance. He's not a sociologist, psychologist, urban planner, community organizer, or any of those things. He's a guy with a story.

Downtown Middletown Ohio via drone. via: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3qAzcuEZGOc

I can see why the media took this story and tried to make it out to be some kind of insight to the Trump Train mentality. I get it. I see the people he describes as left behind. He talks explicitly at having sympathy for them, but also does not excuse their own behavior which contributes to their plight. But this book is not an explanation of the Trump phenomenon. It can't be. It's one man's story of his childhood trauma and struggles. And he makes no attempt to make that broader leap. 

That Vance was criticized by the both right and left for some of the things said in his story is not surprising there's plenty for both here to get dug in about. But I prefer to just look at this as one man's story. And I prefer to just take that as it is and offer him the simple respect of accepting his truth as he tells it. He's the one that lived it in any case. I owe him that much. That's as much as we owe each other at least.

3 3/4 Stars.