Hillbilly Elegy and Me
I read J.D. Vance’s memoir, Hillbilly Elegy, a few years back, before he became a politician. The book had been pitched as offering insight into the disaffection of the white working class. As the granddaughter of a coal miner from Appalachian Ohio, I hoped I would find a mirror to my own experience in Vance’s.
Instead, I ended up frustrated.
Elegy is a vivid story of courage, luck, persistence and transformation, a window into a life that many in this country will never see from the perspective of a survivor. Elite coasters and flatlanders loved it. So why didn’t it resonate with me?
I found clues in the remarkably mixed reviews on sites like Amazon and Goodreads. I wasn’t the only one who had a deeply visceral negative response to the book. “[Vance] is arrogant, patronizing and superior in his assessment of his family,” said one reviewer. “He mostly blamed the poor for being poor, lazy, and generally culpable for all (and few) choices,” said another. “It's one of those conservative love stories of ‘I got my shit together so everyone can.’”
These reviews came from people like me—people with an Appalachian history, or, at least a history in the struggling underclass. Was it simply a defensive reaction to the suggestion that members of my tribe of origin are at least partially responsible for their misfortunes? Maybe. Readers and writers are partners in story. Each reader brings his own experience to the page. My experience called bullshit.
It seemed to me that Vance was guilty of the kind of broad-brushing of "hillbillies" and reinforcement of stereotypes so often applied to urban blacks.
Says Vance, “Our homes are a chaotic mess. We scream and yell at each other like we’re spectators at a football game. At least one member of the family uses drugs….At especially stressful times, we’ll hit and punch each other, all in front of the rest of the family, including young children…”
He cleverly excludes himself from all the generalizations he makes, but he seems to think that because it’s told in first person, it’s okay.
My family history has parallels to Mr. Vance’s. My mother was born in Jackson County, Ohio, still one of the poorest counties in the state, where my grandfather farmed and mined coal. One uncle died in a slate fall in a mine. Another got drunk and accidentally set fire to himself. My great-grandfather got drunk, got too close to the wrong end of a horse, and was kicked to death
Homemade moonshine was the drug of choice in those days. My family surfaces again and again in county court records—arrests for fisticuffs, assaults, and petty theft.
Naturally, they fought in all the wars.
My maternal grandparents, like Mr. Vance’s, moved their family north to the Dayton area to find factory work.
My father grew up poor as the youngest son of a Church of God preacher in the flatlands of southern Illinois. Yet, despite an extremely strict upbringing, two of his brothers inherited the drinking gene and died alone and penniless. His sisters were unlucky in love. My father, a truck driver with an eighth grade education, was one of the more successful of the litter. Part of the reason was that he married my mother, the girl from Appalachia
As a kid, I thought my mother’s family was a lot more fun than my paternal grandparents. Grandma Williams read from the Bible and sang hymns. Grandma Bryan played banjo, told stories, taught us how to play poker, and warned us not to touch the loaded shotgun in her closet. I was there when she ran off my aunt’s n’er-do-well ex-husband who showed up uninvited for Easter dinner.
My father was transferred just as I entered high school. I left behind a junior high where my pregnant friends were dropping out to get married. I enrolled in a “cake-eater” public school where ninety per cent of the graduates go on to college. My guidance counselor had a fit when I said that I had no plans to go, despite being an honor student. All of my friends were making college plans. Before long, I was, too. Social pressure and expectations matter. A lot.
My parents had hoped that they might be able to send my brother to college. It turned out, they couldn’t afford to “send” any of us. Still, all three of us attended on our own dime, and my brother and I were the first in our family to graduate. I did not attend an Ivy League college, and I did not network with the children of privilege. I was lucky that I came up at a time when a minimum-wage job could pay tuition at a state school for a girl who lived at home and was careful with her money. Whose mother was able to drive her to and from the local college
I went on to graduate school and a career as a dietitian. I became a department head at a safety net hospital in Cleveland, and then a college professor at the state college that gave me my start. Now, I’m a full time novelist, channeling the family story-telling tradition.
Recently, I attended a book event in Kentucky, where another author introduced me to a high school boy—an avid reader who came from a train wreck of a family. He worked at a nursing home, and walked five miles each way to work,because he had no transportation. He was saving his money, hoping he might find a way to attend a nearby community college. He said he didn’t know if it would work out, because he had no car, and it was too far to walk.
This is hillbilly culture, too.
For years, we’ve been fed the notion that there is something wrong with those people. Not only that, the undeserving poor are picking our pockets to support their luxurious lifestyles. Reagan Republicans liked to talk about “welfare queens” driving Cadillacs. This time, it’s poor white folks with big-screen TVs and iPads, buying steaks with their food stamps while talking on their cell phones. It’s easier to deal with the poor if we can somehow blame them for their own predicament.
Vance says, “We choose not to work, when we should be looking for jobs. Sometimes we’ll get a job, but it won’t last. We’ll get fired for tardiness, or stealing merchandise, and selling it on eBay, or for having a customer complain about alcohol on our breath….” To which I would add, “--or calling off sick too often to care for a child with asthma, or not making it to work because that old car finally gave out.” I can go to work sick if I have a desk job, moving money around. I can’t do that if I’m a cook, or I work construction.
Those issues plague poor people everywhere, from Appalachia to the urban poor I served in Cleveland.
No doubt about it, some mountain folk are lazy, make bad decisions, and game the system, as do some flatlanders in Indiana, ranchers in Montana, and those bankers who drive their businesses into the ground, only to be bailed out by the rest of us. What we’re spending as a nation on the poor is chump change in comparison to the government welfare afforded defense contractors, agribusinesses, and the tax breaks given to the very wealthy who are not wage earners. The difference is that corporate welfare happens behind closed doors.
Yes, I worked hard. But I was so damned lucky. I was lucky that my mother instilled in me a lifelong love of books. Lucky that she survived the heart attack at forty three that all but bankrupted our family. Lucky that my father was a Teamster, and so made a living wage. Lucky that I didn’t succumb to the family weakness for bad boys who danced on the edge of the law. Lucky that I did not inherit the family weakness for alcohol.
Though I married young, I chose wisely.
When I look back at what might have been, I tally up the near misses, when one bad decision could have led to a cascade of consequences. I realize that hard work and persistence are not always enough. I understand why some people just don’t make it out.
To be fair, Mr. Vance worked hard, and he admits that he was lucky, too, despite his dysfunctional upbringing. But I think it’s easy to overlook the safety nets that supported us. He was lucky that his grandfather had a union job with good wages, benefits, and a pension. Lucky that his grandmother took him in when he had nowhere to go. Lucky that the Ohio State University was within reach, paid for by the GI bill.
Things are harder now. Automation and outsourcing have eliminated many of the jobs that supported our grandparents and parents. Unions don’t provide the protection that they once did, and pensions have all but disappeared. Most grandparents raising grandchildren these days manage on Social Security alone. Tuition has skyrocketed, even at state schools, where taxpayer support has dwindled. The minimum wage has stagnated.
What we used to call welfare has been “reformed” out of existence, and Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security, and other safety net programs are in the cross hairs. It’s hard to argue, as Mr Vance seems to, that generous government benefits are at the root of our current problems.
Why do some people with every advantage flounder and fail while others with everything stacked against them fight their way into a better life? How come my mother and two of her siblings married for keeps, while her youngest sister was unlucky in love four different times? Why do some people manage to stop smoking and drinking when my father, the preacher’s son, smoked until the day he died (of emphysema)?
If we knew, we would fix it. But we still don't know enough about the interaction of nature and nurture to answer that question.
People who succeed against impossible odds can be prisoners of their own experience. They tend to generalize it to everyone else, e.g., I worked hard, and I made it out, why can't they? They overlook any advantages they had, and view those they left behind with disdain.
Some of us continue to cherish our roots, honoring the people and places that made us who we are. Some of us don’t. As Stella Parton says, “When you throw the people who raised your sorry ass under the bus to get attention it says all I wanna know about you.”
As a story of personal transformation, Hillbilly Elegy succeeds. Child of addiction from rustbelt Ohio becomes venture capitalist.
As social science, it fails. It’s a memoir about Vance and his family. Period. It says nothing about me and my family, or you, or about Appalachia at large.
Mr. Vance could use a little less arrogance and a lot more empathy and heart
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Powerful and authentic - just like its author
powerful and a heartfelt message. I am proud of you..