Stolen Pride: Loss, Shame, and the Rise of the Right

by Arlie Russell Hochschild

In her first book since the widely acclaimed Strangers in Their Own Land, the National Book Award finalist and bestselling author Arlie Russell Hochschild now ventures to Appalachia, uncovering the “pride paradox” that has given the right’s appeals such resonance.

For all the efforts to understand the state of American politics and the blue/red divide, we’ve ignored what economic and cultural loss can do to pride. In Stolen Pride, Arlie Russell Hochschild argues that Donald Trump has turned lost pride into stolen pride and shame into blame, and that the result of his rhetorical alchemy has been to weaponize that shame and introduce a potent blend of anger and often violent rhetoric—undermining democracy and highlighting revenge.

Hochschild’s research drew her to Pikeville, Kentucky, in the heart of Appalachia, within the whitest and second-poorest congressional district in the nation, where its residents faced the perfect storm. The city was coal jobs had left, crushing poverty arrived, and a deadly drug crisis struck the region more powerfully than anywhere else in the nation. Although Pikeville had been in the political center thirty years ago, by 2016, 80 percent of the district’s population voted for Donald Trump. Hochschild’s brilliant exploration of how the town responded in 2017, when a white nationalist march came to town—a rehearsal for the deadly “unite the right” march that would take place in Charlottesville, Virginia, just four months later—takes us deep inside a community that defies stereotypes.

In Stolen Pride, Hochschild—whose previous book, Strangers in Their Own Land, was heralded by the New York Times as one of a small handful of books to read to understand Trump and the 2016 election—focuses on a group at the center of the shifting political blue-collar men. Long conversations over six years with mayors and felons, clerks and shopkeepers, road workers and teachers, ex-coal miners, and recovering addicts form the core of the book, movingly introducing readers to real people living deep within the political storm.

Hochschild’s great gift is to decode the emotional narratives that demagogues can speak to and lay bare the pain that lies beneath the rage. And in some of the voices she listens to, Hochschild hears an alternative to the inchoate anger, as she and her subjects imagine a way we might build bridges and move forward.

Genres: Nonfiction, Politics, Sociology, History, Social Justice, Economics, Social Science

400 pages, Hardcover

First published September 10, 2024

About the author

Arlie Russell Hochschild is the author of The Outsourced Self, The Time Bind, Global Woman, The Second Shift, and The Managed Heart. She is a professor of sociology at the University of California, Berkeley. Her articles have appeared in Harper's, Mother Jones, and Psychology Today, among others. She lives in San Francisco.

Reviews

[Sharon]

I decided to stop reading this book today. Dr. Hochschild's research is impeccable, and so is her writing ... but that's not why I stopped reading.

I stopped reading because, after the 2024 election, I no longer care about these angry people or their wounded pride. I'm serious. Their "wounded pride" has released a disaster on our country for a second time, and they're all happy because they figure the people they hate will be punished. They claim they're all for law and order, but they voted for a convicted felon, an adjudicate rapist, and an insurrectionist to hold the highest office in the land again.

Less than 24 hours after the election, every one of my friends abroad had contacted me to say how sorry they were, because they know we'll be a laughing-stock around the world again.

The morning after the election, a trans couple who are friends of a friend committed suicide because they didn't see how they could survive a second term from this man who ran on transphobia.

The morning after the election, a friend who was born and raised in New Mexico, and who happens to be half Native American and therefore brown-skinned, had some random woman demand evidence of his immigration status. She was clearly salivating at the idea of being able to report someone to ICE so they would be deported.

The morning after the election, a friend's middle-school aged daughter had male classmates chanting "Your body, my choice" at her, because they know a rapist holds the highest office in the land and so it must be okay.

Less than 24 hours after the election. Months before the inauguration.

So, yeah. That's why I no longer give a damn about these people or their pride.

[Erin · Rating 5 out of 5]

ARC for review. To be published September 10, 2024.

The author, whose last book was a finalist for the National Book Award turns her lens to Appalachia to examine what she calls the “pride paradox,” or shame into blame that leads to blue/red state division, anger and, sometimes, the violence that threaten democracy.

Hochschild focuses on Pikeville, Kentucky, a small town of about seven thousand in eastern Kentucky fairly close to the West Virginia border. It is in the country’s whitest and second poorest Congressional district. Historically it has been largely reliant on coal jobs which are, for the most part, gone and there is a major opioid problem in the area; by 2016 80% of KY-5 supported candidate Donald Trump.

Thirty-six percent of KY-5 is covered by Medicaid, which the Republicans generally disapprove of and generally attempt to limit. For all of Kentucky, 38% of its budget comes from the federal government. Oh, and 70% of white men without a bachelor’s degree support Donald Trump.

As for the author’s “pride paradox,” it’s that people in red states are generally worse off (see that 70% mentioned above.). However, it’s those same people who, when surveyed, tend to feel that if they are not successful they, the individual person, is responsible for that lack of success….it’s not due to societal factors, etc. (of course, this is, in part, due to racial factors.). Hence the paradox, they are doing badly but also feel badly about it. So they are looking for someone to blame. And boy, does Donald help them with that!

Of course, in the words of one well off resident of the area, “urban liberals don’t even think about it but they’re the pride news. To them, coal miners with dirty faces, off and on poverty, lung disease, we’re the shame news.” OK, to be fair, do those sound like things to be prideful about? There are lots of great things about Appalachia and the people who live there, but those things aren’t among them. Those sound like words from someone who sounds like he has a giant chip on his shoulder. And I’m from and live in Appalachia.

There are really two distinct sections to the book; in the first the author uses the framework of a 2019 White Nationalist march in Pikeville to get a read on the populace, and in the second, a lead up to the 2020 election.

As to the march the whitest area of the country largely defies stereotypes. Matthew Heimbach, the man who would go on to orchestrate Charlottesville, organized the Pikeville march, hoping for lots of publicity and new recruits and got….a lot of disinterest. There are a number of interesting interviews with Heimbach.

The pre-election information is a bit more varied. Yes, there is the guy who believes Democrats are drinking blood. Most is a bit more nuanced, but the basics are the same, and a lot of misunderstandings seem to come from the fact that many people get all their news and information from within the same right-wing bubble that brought us untruths like the idea that the election was stolen, which just isn’t so.

Some residents of Pikeville spoke of a “Democratic” war on coal. Trump promised to bring coal jobs back but the area actually LOST more coal jobs under Trump than it did under the Obama terms. Just numbers people. Facts. Coal is a dying industry. Just a fact. No one can save it.

Another fallacy, Biden and gas prices. This wasn’t Biden…didn’t anyone notice that oil companies made record profits in the past few years? Record profits. And, just for laughs, because both parties need corporate donors, but which party is FAR more apt to provide corporate tax breaks? Republicans.

And then, as to Trump himself, “what to many seemed like disqualifying character flaws - selfishness, narcissism, vengefulness, cruelty - ‘when he’s running for us, that’s to our advantage,’” So, the author notes, kids in school are learning far different rules for character than we look for in our President.

Good book. The people who need it won’t read it, except for, hopefully, everyone in Pikeville and the surrounding area. Maybe it will change some minds there. I will never understand people voting against their own self interest who also can’t argue they aren’t doing it for the greater good of society. One way of solving the pride paradox would be to be proud to stand against “selfishness, narcissism, vengefulness and cruelty.” They aren’t what we should seek in our leaders and are what we must stand vigilant against in ourselves.

[Tatiana · Rating 3 out of 5]

Reading this book didn’t make me understand this whole disaster any better. A sad day.

[Bruce Katz · Rating 4 out of 5]

“If I just look at my own life, I came from nothing and I got to nothing and I’m not a victim of racism because I’m white. So, to most Americans, I’m less than nothing. If it’s such a privilege to be born a white male, what could explain me except my own personal failure?” -- resident of Pikesville, KY


In 2016, sociologist Arlie Russell Hochschild published a book called “Strangers in Their Own Land.” “Strangers,” which won near universal acclaim and became a bestseller, chronicled the author’s five years in southern Louisiana. Her goal was to try to discover why people voted as they did even when their votes went against their own interests. Her research revealed, among other important things, a (not entirely subconscious) narrative that shaped how these voters understood their world: Americans had always made their way up the ladder by following a particular set of rules. They had followed the rules as they were supposed to but now they saw people jumping ahead in line — Blacks, women, etc. — with the encouragement, even assistance, of the government. As they saw it, the problem lay not in whatever success these other people achieved but in the fact that they were cheating at the expense of people who played by the rules.

Hochschild’s new book, “Stolen Pride,” covers similar terrain. Here she shifts her gaze from the Deep South to the whitest Congressional district in the entire country: Kentucky’s 5th, Pikes County, home to the feuding Hatfields and McCoys: 9% non-Hispanic white and only 0.7% foreign born. (In contrast, New York’s 15th, in the Bronx, is only 2% white.)

Like “Strangers,” this new book shows what Hochschild learned by spending time with the residents of the district, interviewing them in an effort to understand how they thought their place in the US, what moral values guided their lives, and what led them to vote so enthusiastically for Trump. It’s a fascinating, even revelatory work.

"Stolen Pride" opens in April 2017 when a man named Matthew Heimbach was requesting a permit to march in Pikesville, KY. The city manager, Donovan Blackburn, was the person responsible for issuing or refusing the permit. Before acting, he went on line where he discovered that Heimbach was the leader of a neo-Nazi group. There wasn’t any legal way to prevent the march, Blackburn discovered, so the permit was issued. When it took place, the people of Pikesville made their disapproval of Heimbach and his followers very clear.

From here “Stolen Pride” jumps to the present day. The fundamental principle guiding how Pikes County residents saw themselves came down to a simple but profoundly important idea: “If I succeed, I take credit; if I fail, it’s my fault.” They were personally responsible for outcomes good or bad, not circumstances or social bias, and they, not government, would have to get themselves out of trouble. Recent decades have treated people in Pike County (and Appalachia in particular) harshly. Jobs in coal mining vanished, along with the tree-covered hills. Where coal miners were once seen as heroes of the American economic engine and people felt pride in continuing in the footsteps of parents and grandparents, now they were being viewed as uneducated, racist hillbillies, on the wrong side of the climate change culture war, and victims of a terrible opioid plague. They felt diminished, helpless, and ashamed.

The key to understanding attitudes in Pike County, Hochschild learned, revolved around the ideas of pride and shame. They could feel proud in what they (or their forebears) accomplished, but had no one but themselves to blame if their lives went wrong. “Shame,” she says, “is the feeling that we have done wrong in the eyes of others. Guilt is the feeling that we have done wrong in our own eyes.”

Pride and shame signal the juncture between the identity we hold out to the world, and how the world responds to our identity. Pride functions as an emotional “skin of the self,” so to speak; it signals when our identity is safe, accepted, and admired, and when we are in danger of rejection. It is our inner response to our outer appearance. Shame also feels like a “skin” —one we wish to shed. We all feel a desire for pride and fear of shame.

“Stolen Pride” examines how this has played out in the lives of Pike County residents. Hochschild spoke with miners, teachers, convicts, government officials, and many others. They seem to have been candid in their conversations with the author. We learn how resentful many of them feel being called racists and looked down upon, as being “rural, poor, exploited, and sacrificed to the interests of the ten urban counties of this state.” Or in the words of actor Bette Midler, "Poor, illiterate and strung out." Worst of all, they are angry, their pride hurt: “We’ve got the put-downs by liberal comedians and commentators making fun of us for being fat, drugged out, talking funny, being poor and prejudiced. Tell me, should I have to defend myself against outside critics like that?”

Hochschild’s argument in “Stolen Pride” is convincing and richly populated. She gives substance to lives too often portrayed in demeaning stereotypes by popular culture and commentary. Her objective is not — or not explicitly — to change minds but to shed light, to humanize. I think she succeeds. WE feel a measure of sympathy for these people, understanding of how they saw themselves and what they had to endure. I found the book particularly interesting in its analysis of how Trump took advantage of the voters’ feelings of shame about all they’d lost, and “helped move shame to blame” and “guided the emotional needle from ‘loss’ to ‘stolen.’ As one man put it, “When Trump told us he was going to bring back coal, I knew he was lying. But I felt like he saw who I was.” [my italics] "Stolen Pride" helps us see who these people are too.


A number of key passages stood out for me in “Stolen Pride:”

“One day around the dinner table with all our cousins and uncles,” James’s sister, Ashley, told me, “I raised the term ‘white privilege.’ And almost everyone around the table had a conniption fit. It was that word privilege that got them furious. They took it as an insult,” Ashley recalled. “My dad laughed me right out of the house. He told me, ‘I went to work at age fifteen and never stopped. I never owned a toothbrush until I was sixteen.’ ”

In Pike County itself, about 22 percent of residents receive SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) benefits, also known as food stamps, and nearly half are on Medicaid. “We have a lot of older, disabled people,” [Democratic state senator Angie] Hatton said. “My job is to make sure we get what we need.” As she saw it, the federal government wasn’t taking resources from Pike County; it was giving the county resources. Indeed, the federal government didn’t look to Hatton like the dictatorial Capitol in The Hunger Games at all as it was giving money to coal and to those in the region who needed it. Still, to many I spoke with, the federal government seemed like the “taker” while the people were the “makers,” and the act of “drawing”—receiving federal help—was associated with shame.

[One young Pike County resident was a Congressional aide and had to be rescued from the rioters on January 6. He spoke to Hochschild about this experience coming home.] “My grandparents are hard-core Trump defenders. But to them, I’m Jimmy and Donna’s son, and they’re proud of me. They listen to Fox News. Its reality is their reality. So, they think the January 6 break-in was a passing event, easy to forget. I felt like I was suddenly thrown into a war zone. Rosa or I could have gotten killed. But to my grandparents, it was like ‘January 6? Oh, Harper had a bad day.’

On Donald Trump’s appeal to Pike County voters:

“It seemed a narrative his followers were predisposed to hear. It shifted the Protestant ethic notion of the responsible party to a focus on victimhood, shame, blame, and revenge. When something is lost, the question arises: Why is it gone? Did I (or we) lose it? Or is it lost because it was stolen?”

To these people, Trump is “the good bully,” the “master anti-shame warrior.” Hochschild describes “four moments” in the ritual that is enacted in Trump’s rallies. In moment 1, Trump makes a public statement which provokes. In moment 2, the punditry shames Trump.
In moment 3, “Trump poses himself as the victim of shaming. Look what they are doing to me. I am good. They are bad. And this could happen to you so stand with me.” And finally, moment 4: “Donald Trump roars back at the shamers."

[Cropredy · Rating 3 out of 5]

When I read Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right it was during the first Trump presidency and as a Democrat, (along with many others), I was struggling to understand the appeal of Trump to so many Americans. Hochschild went deep into the Louisiana oil-and-gas country to find out - deriving a now famous metaphor of standing in line marching slowly to the top of the hill where the American dream was realized, only to witness line jumpers cut in front of you that caused your progress to cease, and furthermore, that these line jumpers were getting government (i.e. Obama administration) encouragement and favoritism. This anger at being denied forward progress led to a willingness to support a man who asserted he understood their situation and would fix it.

Ok, it is now 2024 and I read Hochschild's latest book literally straddling the 2024 presidential election with the last chapters consumed just a few days after Trump was re-elected. In this book, Hochschild embeds herself into eastern Kentucky -- specifically, a mostly white county that had once been a proud, prosperous coal mining center but now coal was gone, opioids rampant, and depopulation underway.

Hochschild interviews all sorts of folks, including a leader of a Nazi march, a white supremacist in prison, recovering drug addicts, city leaders, and so on. Almost all the detailed material came from local men. The book's title "Stolen Pride" is explored through these deep connections - the loss of pride in being able to provide for their families, sometimes further loss of pride through addiction, the ensuing shame, and, the only natural outlet - anger - led to these Kentuckians believing in Trump during his first term and supporting him in his new bid for the simple reason that Trump spoke to their pain and anger.

These personal stories are nuanced and as Hochschild kept up with her storytellers over many years, there is personal growth, reflection and more. These are not hateful people, even the Nazi changes his mind (mostly) over the years. They are unerringly well-spoken, thoughtful, and kind.

Now, unlike the first book which was part of the beginning wave of narratives to explain Trump's popular populism, there have been a cascade of reinforcing stories over the years such that Hochschild doesn't really provide any new insights beyond the conventional wisdom. Just a different framework. Hence, again, unlike the first book which I heartily recommended to all my friends, I feel no such compunction for Hochschild's second book. This could also be that the pandemic, inflation, and the relentless normalizing of Trumpism has left me exhausted and dispirited - that there is in fact no solution to the appeal of Trumpism and that enough of America wants what Trump promises and until such time as they've had enough of it, that we're in for a long winter. Thus, no amount of Hochschild's sociological insights make a damn bit of difference.

No maps or photos. Well-written

[Brian Griffith · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hochschild does the best kind of social research, really getting to know local people and their personal experience of the issues around them. Here, she talks to lots of rural Kentucky people, getting their views on the challenges before them. Many of these people feel betrayed. Their coal-based economy has largely disappeared, and their employment prospects are grim. They try to make a living, and if they’re failing they feel guilty. They’re mostly conservative folks, who feel they bear personal responsibility for their success or failure in life. As Hochschild observes, it’s typically people in the regions hit hardest by changes in the modern economy, who feel the most personally shamed by economic hardship. And that applies most heavily to adult males.

The book becomes an exploration of how men cope with shame. One major response has been substance abuse, as seen in the devastating OxyContin addiction crisis. Another is to turn shame into blame. Blame feels better. And so, for many men in eastern Kentucky, politics becomes a blame game. There are various arguments over who’s to blame for the region’s decline. Clearly, urban environmentalists helped shrink the coal industry. Globalized trade undercut local jobs. City people viewed the locals as backward hillbillies. It seemed like the whole system was rigged against them. As one man puts it,

“I get mad about some things. My brain locks up. You forget that you might get over your anger. But next time it happens to me it all slaps back—that feeling of there being no place for me. … You feel like something out there is designed to keep you down. There’s no specific person to get mad at. But I start thinking, whatever system is in charge here, I HATE it and I want to throw it out.”

Although many locals Hochschild meets are trying to solve problems or start new businesses, the issue of who to blame for the whole mess grows increasingly political. After targeting who to blame, the question turns to punishment, or revenge. After talking at length with an organizer for a white nationalist march, Hochschild summarizes his argument like this: “You’ve lost your regional pride, your well-paid jobs, suffered devaluation of what you do have, and you’ve had enough. We … will erase shame from you and … divert your shame to blame—blame of Jews, Muslims, Blacks, immigrants, liberals, and Democrats. Your access to the American dream? They took it!”

Somehow, these rebels tend to unite under the leadership of an ultra-wealthy New York politician and his ultra-wealthy backers. These leaders seem to embody the “1% corporate elite” who many liberals accuse of hogging the nation’s wealth for themselves. But these leaders point to other enemies: foreigners, migrants, outsiders who aren’t like our people. These nationalists claim that America’s 1% wealthiest leaders will protect real Americans from the outsiders seeking to rob them blind.

[Vivi · Rating 2 out of 5]

I picked up this ethnography because I really enjoyed ”Stranger in their own Land”, but sadly I think this book is significantly weaker from a scientific perspective.
Hochschild is a superb writer and is able to put the reader in situ and, I think, thus, this book is great for a more general audience.

Her “pride paradox”, is a step up from the lack of overarching theory in her first book and is a fascinating view on voting decisions. The only issue is that she doesn't fully address the relationality of the red states paradox vs blue states. Do they reinforce each other, what about areas with more equal voting percentage, and so on. I know this an ethnography and the scale is to be small and precise, but then I would have needed more degrees of definition and analysis in the later parts of the book. Despite the fascinating idea, it remains a book weak on theory.

What astounded me, that there was no real discussion of method and positionality, two things I loved about the "Strangers in their own land" and in my opinion, one of Hochschild's incredible strengths. I got the gist that this book, much more so than the first, is targeting a general audience, but things such as how and why interviewees were selected, how access to the fields was gained and so on, is just really interesting and adds cohesion. This lack of method was particularly sad after the discussion of deep stories in her first book, and I would have loved for her to work further on this topic, explain new insights, and how her idea prevailed in a different surrounding.

Maybe also due to the lack of method, this book lacked many reflections that would have needed an explanation and would have added to the book. Nearly all her interviewees were men. Why? What does this mean for the data? I can explain it partially myself, but I shouldn't have to do that. I know the majority of far-right actors are men, and thus maybe she leaned towards male interviewees. Which wouldn't make sense, though, because the focus in the second part is on the local population , which includes women. I think this negatively impacted the definition of pride presented in the book. Being "proud" of being a "provider" is an incredibly male definition of pride. And leads to questions about; is being a good parent for men just being a "provider" and not being an emotionally available father who takes care of his kid's other needs? I think this very patriarchal and capitalist understanding of pride needed to be reflected and would have added so much more. It would have led to discussion of shifting pride and escaping the pride paradox. This would have been especially interesting with interviewing women and how the economic downturn, which is so incredibly present in the men's interviews, impacted them.

Another smaller issue and reflections I have, is that the minority interviewees interviewed right after Heimbach's introduction are amazing people. These three are people that have overcome strive, build community outreach and help out the region, but looking back at Heimbach, did they need to do that to have a right to be in the US? I think Hochschild false into the issue of trying to present these amazing people as "See they do good for the region", but don't people have a right to safety and work when they are just average. I can understand the impulse to point to the best people, but this needs to be reflected. Heimbach isn't having a good impact on the region, and is really adamant about being German, but there is no discussion about sending him back. This needed to be reflected and discussed.

During my reading, I repeatedly found passages where I expected deeper analysis, which never came. The data is great, the interviews contain so much knowledge and are beautiful examples of great method application, but what happened to it was lacklustre. I feel this book could have used another year in the oven, some more discussion over coffee with colleagues and a good, dedicated editor that wasn't impacted by the author's name. (As a German, I really mean the editor part, because I'm pretty sure "Mein Kämpf" wasn't Hitler’s book, but "Mein Kampf" was.)
In the end there wasn't that much to take away from, just the interesting idea of the pride paradox, which still needed work.

[Alex · Rating 4 out of 5]

The first time I went to Pikeville, I was 17 and pretty new to Kentucky, having moved down from New York. I was astonished both by the mountains that we saw but also some of the poorer living conditions we saw. I'd seen pictures of Appalachia before, but it's another thing to actually go there and see it yourself. Moreover, I had new college friends from Pikeville who loved the region; I always assumed that people from small towns were begging to get out, but some folks stay not just because of family ties or jobs, but because they love being out there. I was super naive but I'm so glad I got to go when I did.

So when I saw Stolen Pride, I was immediately intrigued as someone who's now lived in Kentucky for 15+ years. I am fascinated by conservative politics in part because I didn't grow up with them myself. I don't understand how people can go far-right because, in my mind, what's morally right seems to be so clear to me that I'm surprised other people can't see it. Again, call it naivete, but I've been trying to make more of an active effort to learn about how people come to these beliefs to get where they're coming from. I don't think it's useful to term everyone on the right "deplorables" and assume everyone is deeply racist/homophobic, especially if we want to reach out and start dialogue. (I also want to note here that I understand why a lot of leftist people will cut off conservative people; to be absolutely clear, you do not owe a conversation or your time to anyone who thinks you don't deserve rights and you'd be better off dead; that's absolutely not what this is about. But I'm bad at talking to people who are super different than me, so I at least want to try to understand how they got there.)

This book does a great job at illustrating how people come to different political beliefs on the right. Yes, there are white nationalists in here, but there are also folks who live ordinary lives who feel deeply forgotten. Hochschild's argument here is all about pride and shame, especially the notion that in communities like this, if you don't succeed, it's seen as a failure on your part because you didn't work hard enough -- a very "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" kind of view. There are people who don't necessarily like Trump for a lot of his actions, but also feel like he speaks to a lot of anxieties about the region by saying, "you matter, and this isn't your fault." There are also plenty of people who hate Trump full stop and lean more liberally; it's not simply a sea of red. Hochschild writes about the region and its people with real sensitivity.

I will note that my hardcover copy deserved a better proofreader; there are several instances where quotation marks suddenly appear or are not where they should be, a few note citations that are left in the text, and one case of blatantly wrong information that definitely should've been corrected. (Hochschild says someone told her in "late 2020" about how the news was focused on the January 6th insurrection; I don't know how nobody caught that.) I hope these errors are corrected in future editions because it did make for a slightly distracting reading experience. Nonetheless if you have any interest in Kentucky, Appalachia, and how the right uses pride/shame to appeal to people, this is definitely worth a read.

[Kcaroth1 · Rating 4 out of 5]

Stolen Pride: Loss, Shame, and the Rise of the Right by Arlie Russell Hochschild looks at how an area in eastern Kentucky, near the West Virginia border, has moved from a moderate political stance to over 80% voting red in 2020.

The author spent over seven years getting to know different individuals in depth from a variety of backgrounds and captures the nuances, complications and contradictions of real people. Interestingly, she focuses first on a white nationalist rally that occurred in Pikeville, KY in 2017. While the rally leader was hoping to recruit, the interviewed locals all seemed largely disinterested. But, this helped to set the overall theme of the “pride paradox” which is that the hard-working, typically resilient people in the area take on personal responsibility for situations that are often outside of their control. When this loss of pride, shame, occurs, reactions can focus inward, paving the way for an opioid crisis, or it can focus outward to blame for immigrants, liberals and government, a disdain for urban dwellers and play into racist ideologies. The last part of the book looks at how a strong personality with a narrative promising a release from that shame (grounded in reality or not) can shape opinion.

While much of this did not feel new, it was interesting to follow in-depth stories (not just sound bites), told to a compassionate listener, describing complex lives. However, it would have been helpful to hear from the 20% or so that did not vote for Trump in the last election. What is different about their deep stories that does not lead them down the same road as the rest?

Overall, this is a very readable analysis of the culture and political outlook of Appalachia and is recommended.

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for the digital ARC.

[Grace Spicer-Pilon · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book, and Hochschild’s work in general, is so, so important right now. At a time when empathy is ossifying, bridges are being burned, and it gets harder and harder to understand those on the other side, Stolen Pride is a reminder of the value of listening and trying to understand people who are radically different from us.

There is a fine line between excusing the kind of beliefs explored in this book, and explaining them. Hochschild is a non-judgemental listener, who engages with her subjects respectfully and neutrally. This is the way, I believe, towards pathways of deradicalization. Shame is a powerful motivator, pushing people to the brink and making life so unliveable that the only way forward is displacement.

This book has given me a deeper understanding of those fringe minorities that are quickly growing more dominant within American society, the ones that can only survive on hatred because of how deeply they feel shame. As she did in her last book, Hochschild presents the compelling narratives of those we have stopped listening to, not to condone their beliefs or give their behaviour a platform, but to finally start building back compassion, communication, and empathy.

[Doug Weaver · Rating 5 out of 5]

A wonderfully empathetic overview of the rise of the right in Appalachia.

This is a book about people, not politics. The author shows compassion for her subjects, while telling some ha4d truths about where their views are leading them and our country.

I highly recommend this book for those who really want to understand the circumstances and challenges that have worked together to create the conservative push that we are seeing in so many rural areas.

Arc review. Thanks NetGalley. The book releases September 2024.

[Carol Storm · Rating 3 out of 5]

Okay but nothing special. The author is an academic from Berkeley and she studies the lives of desperately poor white people in Kentucky, to figure out why they want to vote for Trump. It's not nearly as condescending as it sounds. Well, actually it is. There's plenty of drinking and drugging on the Berkeley campus, professor. Clean up your own backyard!

[Maggie Lott · Rating 4 out of 5]

Loved this being set in Kentucky, I definitely learned some things I didn’t know; it did feel kinda long though, I got the point about halfway through

[David Dayen · Rating 4 out of 5]

I didn't at first think much more could be gleaned from a deep study of left-behind southerners, but the circumstances of eastern Kentucky are unique, and the framing device—a white nationalist rally that was a dry run for Charlottesville—is first-rate. Hochschild gives every one of her subjects humanity and really digs deep to understand them. Posting up in a red-state diner is nothing compared to this.

[Audrey Approved · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read Hochschild's Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right last December and it ended up being a 5-star read that slid in right before the end of the year. Stolen Pride is Hochschild's 2024 release, which like Strangers in Their Own Land was published in the fall immediately preceding Trump's election win.

This time focusing on Pikeville, Kentucky in Appalachia, a town that has shifted decidedly redder in the last few decades, Hochschild again uses both peer-reviewed research and empathetic reporting to investigate what has shifted for Pikeville's residents and why Donald Trump has been particularly popular in the area. A major factor discussed is how economic downturn in rural America stands in contrast to a strongly-held beliefs in meritocracy. What happens when somebody who has worked hard their entire life cannot meet the metrics of a "successful" life, but has an entrained belief that only those that work hard deserve success? The answer is resentment, anger, and what Hochschild calls the "pride paradox".

While Strangers in Their Own Land focused more on a smaller group of individuals, Hochschild investigates a wider interview pool in Stolen Pride. At first I felt like the elements she was exploring felt more scattered and less cohesive, but Stolen Pride ultimately came together for me by the end - although if I were to recommend only one of her books, I'd still pick Strangers in Their Own Land. Like before, I think the best audience for this book is somebody (like me) who lives in an entirely blue bubble and wants to understand how "the other side" votes.

Overall, highly recommend!

Fun fact - this is also the first time a publisher has physically sent me a book! Thanks to The New Press for my copy!

[Nick · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Shame comes gradually. Let me give you an example... First thing, a guy gets his layoff slip and he blames the inspector. Then the supervisor. Then he shakes his fist at the Obama administration for putting in the Clean Air Act and adds in Biden and the Democratic Party and the deep state.

Then when his unemployment runs low and his wife asks for money for groceries for the kids, he faces a hard choice - if you need money and don't have a degree, you've got to leave. But his family's here and he doesn't want to leave.

That's when he starts to feel bad about himself. He looks around at the jobs on offer at [$9.00 an hour], and he turns his nose up at what he thinks of as girly service jobs because he can't support his family on that kind of money. But then his partner says, 'We need to feed the kids.' So he takes that crap job, and she says, 'There's still not enough money for food, gas, and fixing the roof.'

It's then that his shame begins to get stronger, because now he feels the problem is on him. And if he leaves on Route 23 looking for work and comes back empty-handed, that's shame waiting for him at home.

Then if he gets into drugs - take it from me - he's ashamed. That can lead to divorce and separation from his kids, and now he's on the dole. He always felt superior to others he saw on the dole. And now he's on it too. So he's ashamed about that and mad that he's made to feel ashamed.

Then he may read some op-ed in the Appalachian News-Express calling people like him a deadbeat for not supporting his family and paying taxes the town needs for its sewer repair. He's not a contributor.

On top of all that, he sees on the Internet people outside the region firing insults at him as ignorant, racist, sexist, or homophobic. Now he's mad at the shamers. And by this point he's forgotten about the shame. He's just plain pissing mad."

Stolen Pride, by National Book Award Finalist author Arlie Russell Hochschild, is the read-to-understand book of the year. Hochschild focuses on a region of great national interest, made especially more so in the aftermath of the most recent election of which America's Vice President-elect is no other than the author of Hillbilly Elegy, J.D. Vance: Appalachia.

Pikeville is a mountain town in an economically distressed county within Kentucky's 5th Congressional District ("KY5"), the second poorest, second most conservative, and the whitest of the nation's 435 districts. This is coal country, or at least it once was. In the period from 1990 to 2020, coal jobs in Kentucky plummeted from over 30,000 to less than 4,000. In this same time period, Purdue Pharma ravaged Appalachia with its seemingly unfettered peddling of its highly addictive painkiller, Oxycontin.

Today, KY5 is at the bottom of the list of all the nation's districts in terms of well-being (i.e., work, health, outlook). Many of its residents (36%) are on Medicare, few (16%) have a college education, and many families (31%) with children are in poverty. In KY5, the median household income is $38,000.

But this is not an indictment of Kentucky; it's a story of its people, a proud and industrious people, and how they respond to today's social, political, and economic environment - one as rocky as the Appalachian Mountains.

Since the 1970s, globalization has taken its toll. Offshoring has risen, automation has accelerated, unions have declined. Rural economies have been particularly hard hit.

Rural Appalachia is a proud region, where community and values remain strong. But, as the author argues, it's becoming more and more difficult for those who reside there to achieve the American Dream. At the heart of Stolen Pride is Hochschild's thesis of the "Pride Paradox."

Appalachia, Hochschild argues, has fierce pride in hard work and personal responsibility. Hard work should lead to success and, when you succeed, you're proud of it. But in this beleaguered region, despite enormous hard work and personal responsibility, it's becoming increasingly more difficult to succeed. Where there's a lesser likelihood of hard work paying off, there's increased likelihood of feeling shame.

What do you do with shame? At first, you might turn it inwards (i.e., it must be me). But past that, when you've done everything you should've done to make a life for yourself, to support your family, you begin to feel that shame as unwarranted - and you begin to turn it outwards.

What happens when people are to believe that they bear personal responsibility for how well or poorly he or she does, and then industry collapses or pulls out? Those left behind are trapped in a pride paradox. When there's limited opportunity to achieve the American Dream and a "maximal responsibility for [the] failure to do so," shame can be relieved by projecting blame, Hochschild argues. Anxiety prompted by one thing (e.g., lack of economic prosperity) can directly fuel hostilities in another.

"[M]any felt as if they were standing in line waiting to move forward toward the American Dream... But the line was stalled, because - as it seemed to them - women, African Americans, immigrants, and refugees were 'line-cutters.' The people in line were returning to right-wing politics to stop this perceived injustice."

Hochschild describes pride as "being of use," and shame as "the feeling that we have done wrong in the eyes of others." Shame, Hochschild argues, can "stir preexisting feelings of inadequacy from which we seek rescue."

That rescue comes in many forms. For many in Kentucky's 5th Congressional District, that rescue was Donald Trump.

While not a thesis that holds true across all of the country's congressional districts, Hochschild asks us to consider the data. In the congressional districts of the 139 Republican House Members who voted not to certify the results of the 2020 election (i.e., "the election was stolen" school of thought), voters were - on average - poorer (10% lower incomes than the voters in the remaining 64 Republican districts), less educated (fewer highschool and college graduates per capita), suffered higher rates of "deaths of despair" (e.g., suicide, drug overdose), and were more likely to be residing in areas where they were a decreasing racial majority.

While the title Stolen Pride may lead you to believe she would, I did not find that Hochschild ever once judged the population she spent years researching. Instead, she sought to understand them and to tell their stories - stories rich with pride and responsibility, but also rife with regional challenges no party seems to have the solution to.

4 out of 5

[EVAN · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Stolen Pride" is a perfect companion to the author's earlier book, "Strangers in Their Own Land."

"Strangers" was a study of Tea Party voters and the appeal of Trump across socioeconomic lines in Lake Charles, LA, heart of the state's petrochemical industry. "Stolen Pride" takes place over the years 2017-2023/4 in Pike County, Kentucky, the most rural Congressional district in America. The book begins in 2017, when Hochshild went there to see whether a planned white supremacist march would gain traction in a county whose coal industry had disappeared.

The book then moves into a study of what happens when pride turns to shame, and th.en turns to blame. The author interviews, in depth over time, several people, mostly men, who've lost mining jobs, suffered from addiction and have otherwise seen their way of life disappear and be denigrated. The author frames the question around the Latin root of pride, prode which means "to be of use.". What I found most fascinating was the way she framed how all of her interviewees wanted to be of use and how they responded when their skills (coal mining, fixing things, resourcefulness) were not only no longer of use, but mocked as antiquated.

I was especially intrigued by the sections on "hood to holler," the similarities between the urban and rural poor, and would love to see a study of that.

Highly recommended, along with "Strangers."

This honest review was given in exchange for an advanced reader copy from Net Galley and The New Press.

[K. · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was underwhelmed by Stolen Pride, which makes me think I should have started with Strangers in Their Own Land.

This book gives voice to people in Appalachia who are struggling with the loss of pride and meaning in their lives. It's always worth learning about and from others. But this book didn't add much to the “what's going on with working class Southerners?” genre in terms of analysis.

I did appreciate the author's insight that while conservative culture tends to valorize independence and look down on one's lack of success as a personal failing, that leaves a conservative person in a tough spot emotionally when they themselves are the victims of circumstance.

I certainly agree with Hochschild that we need to emphasize the emotional aspect of politics more, but I feel this book could have benefited from a more robust theory of how exactly people derive an emotional benefit from the promises made by Trump.

I realized I had read this author before in a sociology of education class - she pioneered the concept of emotional labor by studying flight attendants. How do politicians perform the similar task (though for very different ends) of shaping and cushioning constituents’ emotions? I would have liked to see Hochschild explore this more.

2 / 5 stars, not a bad read and perhaps worth it if you haven't read much else on this subject, but it added little to my understanding of current events.

[Camille Landon · Rating 3 out of 5]

I learned a few things and I do think this book is written with a praise-worthy amount of empathy. For me, though, this just never felt like more than a liberal lady from Berkeley looking through a microscope… maybe it was because the author didn’t integrate herself into her interviews or narratives at all? Maybe I was just genuinely curious about her methodology and way of exploring a community she doesn’t belong to because I couldn’t actually tell if she was getting candid and meaty conversations 100% of the time. Overall, I’m glad I read it and I really appreciated some of the through lines about the pride economy and self-reliance/self-blame, but some of the other paradigms she tried to use fell flat and I didn’t feel as entwined in some of these stories as I wanted to be.

[Marika_reads · Rating 4 out of 5]

Po dwóch wygranych Trumpa nie potrafiłam zrozumieć jak to możliwie, że najbiedniejsza grupa społeczna, trawiona przez bezrobocie czy brak dostępu do usług medycznych tak licznie zagłosowała na prawicowego bogola, który chce robić dobrze wyłącznie innym bogolom, a bidoków ma gdzieś. Arlie Russell Hochschild w „Skradzionej dumie” próbuje rozwikłać ten paradoks.

Co istotne autorka nie prowadzi swoich rozważań w próżni, a żeby odpowiedzieć na zadawane przez wielu pytania, wybrała się w sam środek społeczności białych wyborców prawicy, do miasteczka w Kentucky. I robi najprostszą rzecz na świecie - rozmawia z tymi ludźmi jak z równymi sobie i poznaje ich historie. Analizuje sytuację ekonomiczną, powody spadku jakości ichżycia, mechanizmy wpływające na pogłębiającą się polaryzację społeczeństwa i rosnącą nienawiść do inności.

Najciekawszym aspektem książki jest wprowadzone przez autorkę zagadnienie „paradoksu dumy”. Osoby przeświadczone przez prawicowych polityków, że każdy jest kowalem własnego losu, kiedy same nagle stają się bezrobotne (w opisywanym regionie powodem tej sytuacji jest np. upadek przemysłu kopalnego), to rodzi się w nich poczucie upokorzenia, czują się przegrywami, a żeby nie szukać powodów tej sytuacji w sobie, to zrzucają odpowiedzialność na kogoś innego - imigrantów, osoby o innym kolorze skóry, innej wiary czy nawet orientacji. I w tytule mamy „dumę”, ale paradoksem ten książki jest to, że to nie jest książka o dumie, a o wstydzie.

I może zastanawiacie się, po co czytać o USA, kiedy w Polsce mamy swoje problemy - ale sporo tematów można łatwo przełożyć na nasze realia, więc moim zdaniem warto. Nie uzdrowimy relacji społeczno-politycznych jeśli nie wyjdziemy ze swoich baniek. I nie chodzi o usprawiedliwianie drugiej strony, ale o próbę zrozumienia.

Ja książkę bardzo polecam, a uwagi do niej mam tylko techniczne - sporo powtórzeń, które mi przeszkadzały plus trochę korektorskich przeoczeń, ale ja chyba jestem na nie szczególnie wyczulona.

[Mark Stevens · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent sequel. This reporter/author does a very thorough good job of trying to explain the psyche of the Trump supporter who is poor. The book is logical, but these supporters just aren’t. In spite of reading both of her books, I just don’t understand how these people can be so foolish, how they can’t rise abovetheir unproductive thoughts and beliefs. It’s depressing because I don’t know how we’re ever gonna bring these people back in the fold.

[Savannah Young · Rating 5 out of 5]

The author’s empathy + observation make this book work. It’s good and timely and heartbreaking. Worth your time, especially entering into a second Trump presidency 🫠

[Emma D · Rating 5 out of 5]

very interesting and well written, it exposed me to some new perspectives

[Paul Womack · Rating 4 out of 5]

In a series of conversations over several years the author sought to understand the political attitudes in an Appalachian community. As such, there are the expected contradictions, the evolution of attitudes, and the mysteries of political attitudes and actions. Why the “right” in 2024? The best answer is this: he gets me and my frustrations. That for me is the biggest contradiction: he who ‘gets you’ has done nothing to improve your world; he does let you emote.

[Franklin Codel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Stolen Pride is an important read for anyone trying to understand the mindset and psychology of rural voters - particularly Appalachian white rural voters - and how they see politics and the system at large and how they get information and educate themselves. The author chose to do a deep dive into a specific county in Kentucky and invest the time to get to know people there in a more intimate way than statistics. She basically moved into the area and befriended several people and stayed in touch with them from 2017-2024. While the book was written before the 2024 election concluded, there was nothing that would have changed about the content had she published it a few weeks later.

Stolen Pride deeply explores what shifts in people’s mindsets as their “way of life” disappears. How they react and feel shame, who they blame, what they look for, and how populism takes root. I found the book to be informative yet not too surprising in many ways (living in Iowa, many of the same sentiments are shared by rural Iowans).

Hochschild lays out the contradictions to the reader as well as to the participants of her research. There was a lot of interesting points made about how people are able to hold two completely contradictory views at the same time.

The path forward was hard for me to swallow. The author implores people to spend more time in empathetic conversation, which is all good. However, it seems to be an insurmountable challenge to do so when the basic facts are not agreed to - facts like Qanon conspiracies, that 1/6 was violent, that the 2020 election was indeed not fraudulent, etc. How is one to build trust when denial and lack of desire by the other party to give an inch is present. Or how can one get their head around the notion that someone who has a Nazi swastika tattooed on them and waves the Confederate flag and declares that they are the true patriots wants to listen.

We live in challenging times and, as a nation, we have a lot of work to do to understand each other, heal, and attempt to forge a brighter future. It was not lost on me that the one character that seems to evolve the most and had managed to lift himself and his family out of poverty was the one that chose to go to the big city and get trained in a new career.

I hope she publishes a sequel to see how the thinking of these folks as well as the cohort from Louisiana feels in 4 years.

[Claire · Rating 4 out of 5]

The strong feature of this book is the many types of people who are informants. Hochschild's characters include mayors, successful workers, unsuccessful job seekers, prisoners, new-Nazis; she includes at least one Black, Jew, and Muslim--the latter three countering the image of Appalachia as all white. Immigrants came when the coal mining was going strong and became "stayers."

I am less impressed with the analysis. I agree with the concept she defines as the "pride paradox," wherein a "Protestant ethic" of working hard to succeed makes a person take responsibility and feel shame when they fail even though the failure is caused by external forces. She categorizes types of pride, and that is a strong point, but she is less convincing in claiming that all these prides are stolen and produce shame then anger. She claims the area definition of success is to reach the American Dream of earning more than one's parents, and one of her solutions is to redefine that dream to include many things more communal than the individualistic version, even climate change. With that I agree. However, there is no attention paid to rethinking/relearning the "Protestant ethic," and that too is important.

She is interested in learning why the KY district she studies is red. Though one of her questions is Why does Trump appeal here? she doesn't test her theories of answer by interviewing any who identified as Democrats. I think that would be revealing. A side issue emerges from her interviews about attitudes to race and rejections of being designated as privileged, and it is addressed in an interesting way.

[Claire Lee · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book sheds light on the psychology Trump's supporters and how many of them aren't the right wing extremists portrayed in the news. The reason why they support Trump comes down to the internalized shame they feel from their industries and regions declining, and how Trump is willing to go up to bat for them. Many of them realize that he's not a perfect batter and is zealous about many issues they aren't passionate about. But at the end of the day, they go to him because they feel like he's all they have.

In no way does the author try to justify their views, and I personally am still angered by the consequences of their support. I'll never agree with their metaphor that we're all in a line, and BIPOC are trying to 'cut the line'. But I can see why they might feel that way, and until Democrats can crack the code on inclusive messaging that doesn't exclude the majority of Americans, nothing will change.

[Allison · Rating 5 out of 5]

Anytime a book backs up 266 pages of text with 93 pages of documented Notes, you know it is well-researched. If you are mystified by how anyone could have voted for Donald Trump, read this book. The educated Democrats (like me) missed the support of a large slice of the American Voter pie in the last election, and this book explains it well. As always, people are more complicated than they present, and learning about folks different than yourself is time well spent. Hochschild goes to Pikeville, KY to learn about this purple-turned-red voting district and talks to people whose lives were governed by the coal industry. After the mines closed, the economics of the area declined and the residents lost their pride in their contribution to society, their financial independence and their ability to care for their families. This is not a study in pity, but a study in the different responses to the loss of pride. Pay attention, and read this book!

[Kristin Boggs · Rating 5 out of 5]

From the book’s inside cover: “For all attempts to understand the state of American politics and the blue/red divide, we’ve ignored what economic and cultural loss can do to pride.”

A Berkeley sociologist, Hochschild spends several years in Pikesville, KY, one of the country’s whitest and most rural congressional districts, interviewing locals and natives to learn more about their political, cultural, and social contexts in this once thriving coal-mining community.

This book got me thinking about this issue in a way I have not previously considered; I find myself more compassionate, understanding, and curious about political differences that I so easily simplify and color black and white. To me, a book that does that absolutely deserves 5 stars.

[Joy Matteson · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an incredible deep dive into Appalachian culture and its people. JD Vance wishes he wrote this book in 2017. Dr. Hocschild spent 4 years (4 years!!) listening to rural Kentuckians who saw words like "stolen", "pride", and "honor" as stamped with their own identity, even before Trump was elected. This deserves a wide readership, but especially from folks on the left side of politics. Take the time as Hochschild has done to listen to people who are angry. We need more bridge builders than ever.