Words&Dirt

Reading J.D. Vance’s Hillbilly Elegy officially puts me on the bandwagon of liberal Americans who are trying to figure out what the hell is going on in our country. And while I don’t think it’s fair for a confounded public to turn to a single figure to explain the motives of rural Trumpites, historical circumstances seem to have thrust Vance into that position. The good news is that Vance seems up to the task; Hillbilly Elegy is a good book by any standard, but perhaps an indispensable one for this particular American moment.

The first thing that’s important to keep in mind about Hillbilly Elegy is that it’s a memoir written by a young man who (hopefully) still has more than half his life ahead of him. Vance acknowledges this in the book’s opening sentences, and seems to have no trouble admitting that his story is just that––his story. Vance begins with his family’s hillbilly origins in Jackson, Kentucky, and describes how his grandparents moved to Middletown, Ohio, in search of a better life. These same grandparents later formed the foundation of whatever stability existed throughout Vance’s chaotic upbringing, and he attributes his escape from that life––first through joining the Marines, then by attending Ohio State and finally Yale Law School––largely to their presence and support.

Using anecdotes to draw larger conclusions about society is a tricky game, but Vance neither overreaches nor undersells the importance of the general influences that shaped his childhood and still shape the childhoods of many young Americans. Hillbilly Elegy is a measured, elegant, and self-aware piece of writing:

Though I will use data, and though I do sometimes rely on academic studies to make a point, my primary aim is not to convince you of a documented problem. My primary aim is to tell a true story about what that problem feels like when you were born with it hanging around your neck. (8)

It would be tough to argue that Vance does not achieve his stated goal. Hillbilly Elegy is packed with thoughtful reflections on how and why hillbilly culture has taken its modern form, the strengths and weaknesses of public and private solutions to socioeconomic problems, the roots of violence and addiction in poor white America, and the elusive paths to self-empowerment that sometimes appear even when they seem least likely. At its heart, the book is a searing indictment of poverty––that singular, equal-opportunity destroyer of human life.

It’s worth pointing out that this book is not about race, and shouldn’t be viewed as a document that either endorses or seeks to solve the racial tensions that still fester in our nation’s soul. Refusing to take on race when engaging in cultural commentary about America can be enough to alienate some readers, but I would encourage anyone leaning in that direction to give this book a fair shot and treat it as a cultural document with a race-neutral agenda, something I think should still be possible when genuine value and insight are on the table.

Whether it was his intention or not, Vance has come to speak for a group of Americans that is misunderstood at best and reviled at worst. Hillbillies, as Vance depicts them, are violent and ignorant, but Vance reminds us that we ought to be just as concerned with the causes of these dispositions as we are with their problematic results. The cause of a hillbilly’s wrath doesn’t (and shouldn’t) matter to anyone on the receiving end of a thrown fist, a pulled pistol, or a hateful epithet, but it ought to matter greatly to people with a broad concern for the scope and direction of American life. Vance is not in the business of excusing or justifying bad behavior, but he has an impressive knack for explaining it:

There was that day when Uncle Teaberry overheard a young man state a desire to “eat her panties,” a reference to his sister’s (my Mamaw’s) undergarments. Uncle Teaberry drove home, retrieved a pair of Mamaw’s underwear, and forced the young man––at knifepoint––to consume the clothing.

Some people may conclude that I come from a clan of lunatics. But the stories made me feel like hillbilly royalty, because these were classic good-versus-evil stories, and my people were on the right side. My people were extreme, but extreme in the service of something––defending a sister’s honor or ensuring that a criminal paid for his crimes. (17)

Honor-based systems for dealing with matters of social standing and justice are far older than modern legal systems, so it’s no surprise that this kind of thinking is alive and well in hillbilly culture. Vance’s nod to the connection between the particular savagery of his relatives and the universal experience of wanting to defend one’s notion of rightness is critical. If snooty coastal liberals like me are to understand our fellow Americans better, we need explanations and examples of our political foes that are humanizing. We don’t need to come away from Vance’s narrative agreeing with hillbillies or approving of their behavior, but we do need the reminder that they are people too. This is one of the only ways to begin closing the perilous and growing ideological chasm that pervades American politics:

However you want to define these two groups…rich and poor; educated and uneducated; upper-class and working-class––their members increasingly occupy two separate worlds. As a cultural emigrant from one group to the other, I am acutely aware of their differences. (252)

When I first heard Vance interviewed on a podcast last year, this was the quality that immediate jumped out at me: We do not have enough people like this on our public stage, people who have lived and survived in radically disparate corners of American society, and who are therefore uniquely equipped to help these groups communicate with and understand one another. This may sound overblown, but I have begun to think of people like Vance as national treasures––not because they are particularly extraordinary in their personal qualities, but because our society has become so stratified that individuals with their life-stories are increasingly difficult to come by. It is for this reason that I hope Vance remains in the public eye; I would be thrilled to see him run for national office, even though I suspect we would disagree on a number of political issues.

Vance ends with a well-worn but authentic call for personal responsibility in the face of the cultural decay that has wrought disaster on hillbilly culture: “We hillbillies need to wake the hell up…Public policy can help, but there is no government that can fix these problems for us” (255). This statement applies to all Americans in one way or another––yet another way in which Vance bridges the gap between his individual story and the greater concerns of his fellow citizens. Regardless of personal backgrounds or political proclivities, we all have something useful to learn from Vance’s ideas and experiences.

Rating: 8/10