Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis

by J.D. Vance

I wrote this book because I’ve achieved something quite ordinary, which doesn’t happen to most kids who grow up like me.

Americans call them hillbillies, rednecks, or white trash. I call them neighbors, friends, and family.

We do not like outsiders or people who are different from us, whether the difference lies in how they look, how they act, or, most important, how they talk.

Interesting- but generalization for sure

There is a lack of agency here—a feeling that you have little control over your life and a willingness to blame everyone but yourself.

This book is not an academic study.

True

if I leave you with the impression that there are bad people in my life, then I am sorry, both to you and to the people so portrayed. For there are no villains in this story. There’s just a ragtag band of hillbillies struggling to find their way—both for their sake and, by the grace of God, for mine.

the man had no job and was proud of it. But, he added, “they’re mean, so we just try to avoid them.”

I am a hill person. So is much of America’s white working class. And we hill people aren’t doing very well.

“Never be like these fucking losers who think the deck is stacked against them,” my grandma often told me. “You can do anything you want to.”

A street that was once the pride of Middletown today serves as a meeting spot for druggies and dealers. Main Street is now the place you avoid after dark.

Research does reveal a genetic disposition to substance abuse, but those who believe their addiction is a disease show less of an inclination to resist it. Mom was telling herself the truth, but the truth was not setting her free.

The fighting was relatively normal by my standards (and Mom’s), but I’m sure poor Matt kept asking himself how and when he’d hopped the express train to crazy town.

a teacher at my old high school told me recently, “They want us to be shepherds to these kids. But no one wants to talk about the fact that many of them are raised by wolves.”

Political scientists have spent millions of words trying to explain how Appalachia and the South went from staunchly Democratic to staunchly Republican in less than a generation. Some blame race relations and the Democratic Party’s embrace of the civil rights movement. Others cite religious faith and the hold that social conservatism has on evangelicals in that region. A big part of the explanation lies in the fact that many in the white working class saw precisely what I did, working at Dillman’s. As far back as the 1970s, the white working class began to turn to Richard Nixon because of a perception that, as one man put it, government was “payin’ people who are on welfare today doin’ nothin’! They’re laughin’ at our society! And we’re all hardworkin’ people and we’re gettin’ laughed at for workin’ every day!”20

I always straddled those two worlds. Thanks to Mamaw, I never saw only the worst of what our community offered, and I believe that saved me. There was always a safe place and a loving embrace if ever I needed it. Our neighbors’ kids couldn’t say the same.

No pep talk or speech could show me how it felt to transition from seeking shelter to providing it. I had to learn that for myself, and once I did, there was no going back.

With little trust in the press, there’s no check on the Internet conspiracy theories that rule the digital world.

it’s a good bet that the other conspiracies have broader currency than we’d like. This isn’t some libertarian mistrust of government policy, which is healthy in any democracy. This is deep skepticism of the very institutions of our society. And it’s becoming more and more mainstream.

At no time was this more obvious than the first (and last) time I took a Yale friend to Cracker Barrel. In my youth, it was the height of fine dining—my grandma’s and my favorite restaurant. With Yale friends, it was a greasy public health crisis.

I used to get chicken fried steak when my mom took me to Cracker Barrel on road trips growing up! https://www.crackerbarrel.com/menu/items/c/country-fried-steak

Even excessive shouting can damage a kid’s sense of security and contribute to mental health and behavioral issues down the road.

We become hardwired for conflict. And that wiring remains, even when there’s no more conflict to be had.

I believe we hillbillies are the toughest goddamned people on this earth.

Get point, but hard to believe