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

Vance’s book is about growing up in a family with Appalachian roots, a group of people known as “hillbillies.” The term “hillbilly” can have a positive, negative, or neutral connotation, depending on the context [and user]; most often, it is used as a slur for a poor, unsophisticated white person. Hillbillies have a legacy and historical presence in Appalachia, and the Ozarks to the West. Most of the book is set during Vance’s childhood and young adult life; it opens with a description of the ancestral heritage, the history, of the hillbilly, a lineage defined by the scores of Scotch-Irish who immigrated to the Americas from the British Isles in the 18th century.

Between 1717-1775, about 200,000 Scotch-Irish came to the New World. Famine and religious persecution were constants throughout Europe at this time, and several of both in the Isles would induce massive movements of people from one region to another, including overseas to the New World. As far as the legacy of the hillbilly is concerned, the short version is: many Protestants immigrated to Ireland from Scotland, but Ireland, being by and large Catholic, proved inhospitable over time. The historical record shows that while Protestants were 1/3 of the population of Ireland, they were three-quarters of all immigrants.

Other major moments in hillbilly history occurred in the 20th century, namely, two waves of emigration that took many out of Appalachia, and into the Midwest [primarily]. The first wave occurred after World War I, when “returning veterans found it nearly impossible to find work in the not-yet-industrialized mountains of Kentucky, West Virginia, and Tennessee” and which ended in the 1930s, when “the Great Depression hit Northern economies hard” (28). The second wave, occurring during the 1940s and 1950s, was comprised of returning World War II veterans and a rising number of young people in Appalachia. The stark economic realities of the region were also part of this latter movement; Vance writes, “As the economies of Kentucky and West Virginia lagged behind those of their neighbors, the mountains had only two products that the industrial economies of the North needed: coal and hill people” (28). These people were part of a “massive migration from the poorer regions of Appalachia to places like Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, Pennsylvania and Illinois” (21). Vance’s grandmother and grandfather were part of this second wave, leaving Jackson, Kentucky for Middletown, Ohio in the late 1940s.

This migration brought about class issues among whites in the Midwest [the term “North” to describe this region seems confusing, unless one is situated in Appalachia, but in this review the terms “Midwest” and “North” are interchangeable]. Vance cites a book called Appalachian Odyssey, whose author states, “these migrants disrupted a broad set of assumptions held by northern whites about how white people appeared, spoke, and behaved” (31). Vance claims that in his upbringing in Ohio, there were two types of white people: “old-fashioned, quietly faithful, self-reliant, [and] hardworking,” and the other type: “consumerist, isolated, angry, distrustful” (148). The former describes what Appalachian Odyssey refers to as “northern whites.” Clearly the hillbillies, to Vance, are the latter type, and throughout the book Vance is highly critical of their values, and work ethic. Before I get to these criticisms, and the broader overview of this culture, it’s important to outline his family life.

Vance writes that when the Scotch-Irish arrived in America, “they were deeply attracted to the Appalachian mountains” (3-4), perhaps because that was one of the places they could live without interference. Migrant groups tended to be small, and clannish, with a disdain for outsiders and a proclivity for isolation, rustic living, and violence. Vance describes the characteristics of this culture as he experienced it, focusing on what he calls the good [“An intense sense of loyalty, a fierce dedication to family and country”] and the bad [“We do not like outsiders or people who are different from us…we are more isolated than ever”] (3,4). He grew up with an absent father and a mother with addiction problems, plus various love interests, and her instability forced his grandparents to take over and raise him. He calls himself an “abandoned son” (13) and was raised by his “Mamaw” and “Papaw.” Vance grew up with them in Ohio, and spent summers in the family’s point of origin, Jackson. This is a strength of the book, as his presence in Kentucky gives us insight into not just his Appalachian family, but life in the region [what it’s like to go down in the “holler,” what churches are like, etc]. Up north, Vance was growing up just as Middletown was beginning to suffer economically; Vance writes, “In the 1980s, Middletown had a proud, almost idyllic downtown,” but over time, became “little more than a relic of American industrial glory. Abandoned shops with broken windows [now] line the heart of downtown” (50). He grew up in an era of decline, and unemployment, which led to rises in drug abuse, violence, general human misery. Violence clearly occurs because of these stressors, but at times it also seems like an innate family, and indeed hillbilly, quality. Early in the book Vance describes an incident where his Mamaw and Papaw destroyed merchandise and threatened a sales clerk in a drug store because the clerk was “mildly rude” to him; when discussing the incident with his Uncle Jimmy, Vance writes, “‘like everyone else in our family,’ Uncle Jimmy said, ‘they could go from zero to murderous in a fucking heartbeat’” (40).

Education is a large part of the book. Early on, Vance describes the educational systems in Appalachia as abysmal, especially where his family is located; he writes, “the public schools are so bad that the state of Kentucky recently seized control” (19). This is part of a larger issue with crumbling infrastructure, which he feels results from a lack of governmental support for the population. “The people [in Appalachia] are physically unhealthy,” he writes, “and without government assistance they lack treatment for the most basic problems” (19). An additional obstacle to this is the closed-offedness that is common among hillbillies. Vance claims hillbillies “will hesitate to open their lives up to others for the simple reason that they don’t wish to be judged” (19). Vance also mentions a relatively new blight on the land: drugs, in particular prescription drugs. On one visit to Jackson, his cousin tells him, “Drugs have come in…And nobody’s interested in holding down a job” (18). In hillbilly country, we learn, “An epidemic of prescription drug addiction has taken root” (19). This, though, is not a focus of this book.

We see, among all the drug abuse and violence, early mentors that helped Vance, who makes claims to acts of violence but does not have a significant history of drug abuse. The most important person is Mamaw. In one passage, Mamaw tells him “Never be like those fucking losers who think the deck is stacked against them…You can do anything you want to do” (36). He also found a savior of sorts in his sister Lindsay. Of his sister, Vance writes, “she made dinner when she had to, did the laundry when no one else did, and rescued me from the backseat of the police cruiser [the cruiser issue is a long story]. I depended on her so completely that I didn’t see Lindsay for what she was: a young girl, not yet old enough to drive a car, learning to fend for herself and her little brother at the same time” (83). He also had a cousin, Amber, who “was an academic star in high school and later earned a college degree, the first in her nuclear family to do so. She saw the worst of Jackson’s poverty firsthand and she overcame it” (20). The female family members were the ones who took care of him, and instilled in him education as a means of deliverance from Middletown. We also see Mamaw giving Vance a home stable enough for him to function. Vance writes, “the peace of Mamaw’s home gave me a safe space to do my homework. I could say that the absence of fighting and instability let me focus on school and my job” (151). Later, Vance would go on to graduate from THE Ohio State University, and Yale Law School. One sees that education, for him and his cousin, was the path out, which makes for a sharp rebuke of the poor education system in Appalachia: if education is the way to a better life, why is it so neglected?

Most people from his background, we see, do not end up like Vance, and he lists a litany of reasons why that is. For one, he discusses the hillbilly lifestyle: “our eating and exercise habits seem designed to send us to an early grave…we rarely cook…Exercise is confined to the games we play as children” (148). Work ethic is another issue. As a teenager, he worked at a tile factory, and he describes a young couple, a teenage man and his pregnant wife, who worked there too: “the girlfriend missed about every third day of work and never gave advance notice…Bob [the boyfriend] missed work about once a week, and he was chronically late. On top of that, he often took three or four daily bathroom breaks, each over half an hour” (6). Vance sees this as typical, and maligns the reality of “Too many young men immune to hard work. Good jobs impossible to fill for any length of time…a culture that increasingly encourages social decay instead of counteracting it” (7). Near the end of the book, he describes a friend he met in a Middletown bar “who told me that he had recently quit his job because he was sick of waking up early.” Later on, Vance “saw him complaining on Facebook about the ‘Obama economy’ and how it had affected his life” (193).

Vance also talks about the hillbilly tendency to have a limited view of the outside world, and falling under the influence of those who frame it as a threat. He discusses propaganda, describing how “talk about Christians who weren’t Christian enough, secularists indoctrinating our youth, art exhibits insulting our faith, and persecution by the elites made the world a scary and foreign place” (97). This leads to a discussion of a new phenomenon: the internet. Hillbillies, like many others, are often prone to wild conspiracy theories they find online. “With little trust in the press,” Vance writes, “there’s no check on the Internet conspiracy theories that rule the digital world” (192). This comment references the American right broadly, and Vance feels it represents a problem that is growing out of control, and which he feels is bound to get worse. Regarding the conspiracy that President Barack Obama is from Africa, Vance writes, “if a third of our community [here he again means conservatives generally] questions the president’s origin – despite all evidence to the contrary – it’s a good bet that the other conspiracies have broader currency than we’d like” (193). Side note: Ta-Nehisi Coates in We Were Eight Years in Power: An American Tragedy brings up a poll which shows 57% of Trump voters believed Obama was “probably” or “definitely” from Kenya in 2017, after Trump publicly admitted he was bullshitting about it the whole time.

Vance claims the right in America has a “deep skepticism of the very institutions of our society. And it’s becoming more and more mainstream” (193). Suspicion sprouts from isolation, a feeling of outsiderhood. He cites a study done by three sociologists which shows that “hillbillies learn from an early age to deal with uncomfortable truths by avoiding them, or by pretending better truths exist [and this] makes it hard for Appalachians to look at themselves honestly” (20). There is an entrenched denialism, a lack of willingness to reconcile the forces that govern one’s life; Vance, in this vein, seems to blame a lack of personal responsibility and a inclination to scapegoat others as two sides of the same coin, writing that “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” (194). He also blames leadership, be that government or authoritative voices in media, for nurturing this. “Instead of encouraging engagement,” he writes, “conservatives foment the kind of detachment that has sapped the ambition of so many of my peers…the message of the right is increasingly: It’s not your fault that you’re a loser; it’s the government’s fault” (194).

Other details that stood out to me had to do with religion and values. Vance writes that in Appalachia, most people are “deeply religious but without any attachment to a real church community” (93). Throughout the book, one gets a sense that outside of family not a lot of communal activities occur. He also writes of Mamaw’s love of the TV show The Sopranos. In his book The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion, Jonathan Haidt writes that in various studies, conservatives consistently rank values of loyalty and authority [slightly] over those of caring for others and fairness. Of Tony Soprano, Vance writes, “Mamaw respected his loyalty and the fact that he would go to any length to protect the honor of his family. Though he murdered countless enemies and drank excessively, the only criticism she ever levied against him involved his infidelity” (134).

In sum, the book succeeds as a vessel through which to view hillbilly culture. Years ago I read a review of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s short story “My Kinsman, Major Molineaux,” which claimed the protagonist Robin, who almost always had a lantern in his hand, was indeed a lantern himself, shedding light on life in a New England town as he travels through its streets, taverns, backalleys, thoroughfares. Vance’s most valuable contribution is to serve the reader the same way. His love life, and relationships with girls generally, feels like a suppressed topic though, and we see a much higher comfort level talking about violence [a Hawthornian topic if ever there were one]. It seems more like a memoir / essay hybrid, perhaps because he knows his biography, which seems inadequately rendered as a whole, isn’t the driving force behind the book, it’s the world he grew up in. The book is easy to get through, and at its best depicts a group of people many might not know about in detail. It’s hard to say the book sheds new light on our country’s political situation, but it does show how deeply poverty, violence, and drug abuse plague people, and how difficult it can be to extricate one’s self from a culture that is more likely to cement one into a life of despair than it is to facilitate one’s deliverance from it. In that regard, Vance’s life is a triumph, and this book clearly is a demonstration of all he’s accomplished, and all he has overcome.