Since Former President and Presidential Nominee Donald Trump announced his Vice President running partner, the world has wondered who James Donald Vance is and as per usual, the lazy main-stream-media have reached for throw-away lines and mis-characterising headlines. The soundbites and click-bait taglines lack context and mis-represents the man chosen to run with Trump. Vance is hard to pigeon-hole because he’s not a clone of Trump and he has spoken against Trump rhetoric. Vance didn’t speak this way because he’s committed to a left-wing liberal ideals – he positioned his points of difference because of the life he’s lived, his roots and family experiences. Hillbilly Elegy is JD Vance’s memoir and provides depth, context and a better understanding of who Vance is and what motivates him.
Hillbilly Elegy was first published in 2016 and has since been adapted to the Netflix screen in the documentary of the same name. Vance was involved in the production of the screen version so it’s a true representation of the book.
The sub-title states, A Memoir Of A Family And Culture In Crisis and in its simplest terms that is what Hillbilly Elegy is. But, it’s a snapshot of a time and an era of radical change and shift for the Appalachian people in Kentucky.
Too many books that provide commentary on impoverished communities with social dysfunction are written in an older era, Hillbilly Elegy is written in the 1980s and JD Vance is nearly 40. He writes not from a predominantly black community and cite the issues as a racial divide, but from a place of family breakdown, the scourge of addictions and unemployment in the rust-belt.
How does one boy overcome the odds, to rise above the inevitable patterns of low-income, debt, alcohol and drug dependency, low-maternal age pregnancies and untapped educational opportunities? Hillbilly Elegy provides the raw, confronting answers and it’s far from a saccharine-soaked ‘rags to riches’ cliched narrative. Vance challenges the stereotypes often rolled out in attempts to define the Appalachian Hillbillies. He writes from his lived experience in Jackson Kentucky, Middletown Ohio through his formative years and then onto life on Ohio College campus that lead to the Ivy League Yale University, New Haven Connecticut. A truly remarkable journey.
It’s often said ‘it takes a village to raise a child’ but Vance sharply divides that mantra to show that it is the safety of kin, a constant adult in the family with a sharp eye to give you the stability and values to make it into adulthood equipped. His grandparents were the difference along with his remarkable older sister Lindsay. It was later in life that mentors played key roles in shaping the man he’d become. Vance boldly asserts in Hillbilly Elegy that hard work is essential and a blend of tax-dollars in support to give a ‘help-up’ makes a significant difference to stem the tide of dependency, dysfunction and bereft communities. His story is not mere observation and opinion, but they make sense, and his ideas could be applied to our own depressed rural zones – that’s the strength of Vance’s writing – it’s not just for Kentucky or Ohio.
I highly recommend Hillbilly Elegy to understand the man behind the headlines.
Review by Sue Reid (also a board member of Family First NZ).
