Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis
One of the admirable features of the American political system is that, every four years, it offers citizens the chance to stage a revolution. Ballots, after all, tend to be safer than bullets. Integral to that enforced quadrennial re-examination is the opportunity for a wide range of opinions to jostle for attention. Another benefit, though much rarer, is that formerly silent or ignored constituencies can make themselves heard. Now, whether from pure coincidence, or the workings of a savvy publishing industry, recent months have seen the publication of a wide array of books re-introducing such groups of Americans, groups who’ve been long overlooked, neglected, slighted—and, yes, even dismissed as “deplorable.” These books provide some crucial social context for this uniquely acrimonious political season.
The title of Rebecca Traister’s All the Single Ladies: Unmarried Women and the Rise of an Independent Nation, announces her chosen subject in a study both sociological and economic. A more professorial volume is The Hero’s Fight, by Patricia Fernandez-Kelly. It examines the predicament of a specific group, Baltimore’s African-Americans, a “racially segregated population [who are] objects of surveillance, containment and punishment.”
Vance draws for us a “culture in crisis.” Global forces beyond their control is what drove the Scots-Irish Appalachian diaspora from the coal mines, and those same forces still conspire to make employment in their new home erratic and unreliable.
Three other recent books address a third group, one that seems eager, like the rookie pitcher “Nuke” LaLoosh in Bull Durham, to “announce [its] presence with authority.” It is the electoral contingent psephologists label “under-educated, white voters.” These books help explain the powerful appeal of the novice politician, Donald Trump. Strangers in their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right, by Artie Russell Hochschild looks at the culture wars “from the perspective of white conservatives who feel they are losing [their country.” (The Economist September 10). Nancy Isenberg’s White Trash traces four centuries of sneering disrespect for that social class. The most personal, poignant and accessible of the three is Hillbilly Elegy, by J.D. Vance, a frank, autobiographical account from an actual, living representative. What makes Vance’s book all the more credible is that its intimate portrait of the hillbilly world was being written well in advance of the Trump phenomenon.
• • •
His direct, honest and personal account of three generations of Vances—parents, grandparents and an array of step-brothers, half- brothers, along with his mother’s serial boyfriends—also provides sharp insights into hillbilly “culture.” We learn a lot about Appalachia, the region whence many of the family and neighbors hailed, and we also learn about Middletown, a typical industrial town in south-eastern Ohio Rust Belt where many of those transferred folk sought work. Through his family we meet the current “crop of former hillbillies whom economic pressures have driven from their original Appalachian homes.” He draws for us a “culture in crisis.” Global forces beyond their control is what drove their diaspora from the coal mines, and those same forces still conspire to make employment in their new home erratic and unreliable.
But J.D. is an exception to what reads like a life sentence of poverty and despair for his fellow hillbillies. His Mamaw (grandmother) saved him from the fate of his drug-addicted mother, caring teachers guided him to confidence, and the Marines taught him discipline. And, again short-circuiting an easy stereotype we might seize, Vance points out that even his failure of a mother was a woman of wise, open instincts. “Mom wanted us to be exposed to people from all walks of life. One of her friends was an older gay man [who died unexpectedly]. She made me watch a film about Ryan White.” (Due to a blood transfusion that had given him AIDS, he was not permitted to attend his school.) “Every time I complained about school, Mom reminded me of Ryan White and spoke of what a blessing it was to get an education. She was so overcome by White’s story that she handwrote a letter to his mother after he died.”
• • •
He defines his “community” fairly narrowly. “I may be white, but I do not identify with the WASPS of the northeast. Instead, I identify with the millions of working-class Americans of Scots-Irish descent who have no college degree. To these folks, poverty is the family tradition. … Americans call them hillbillies, rednecks or white trash. I call them neighbors, friend and family.” That does not prevent him from being judgmental about these neighbors’ irresponsible behavior which he observed working at the local dry goods store. “I learned how people gamed the welfare system: they buy two dozen-packs of soda and then sell them at a discount for cash.” Vance, struggling to make ends meet, naturally resents fellow poor whites who spend their food stamp money on luxuries, not necessities
A poignant example not only of the family’s deep loyalty but also its shame is seen in Papaw (Grandfather) who keeps showering gifts on J. D.’s spendthrift sister. He keeps doing so because he is determined that “She doesn’t feel she comes from nothing.” Still, “from low social mobility to poverty to divorce to drug addiction, my home is a hub of misery.” And he spells out powerfully how that growing-up environment is a huge obstacle to future social success. “When you go from working-class to professional class, almost everything about your old life becomes unfashionable at best or unhealthy at worst.” It is a psychological and behavioral insight Charles Dickens dramatized time and again, and Vance’s observation that “that the wealthy and powerful … follow a different set of norms and mores” voices Jay Gatsby’s fatal discovery. As F. Scott Fitzgerald noted: “the very rich … are different from you and me. They possess and enjoy early, and it does something to them.”
• • •
Vance provides some statistics for anchoring his personal story to a wider economic and sociological context. He notes that while “well over half of blacks, Latinos and college-educated whites expect that their children will fare better economically,” the hillbilly contingent is far less hopeful. “Among working-class whites, only 44 percent share that expectation.” And 42 percent of them “report that their lives are less economically successful than their parents.” This group feels despair, and the resentment despair breeds. Although—or perhaps because—they come from a tightly structured, kinship-bonded community, their behavior both within the family and among their wider communities is often marked by violence, by murderous loyalty. (What, after all, were the legendarily feuding Hatfields and McCoys? Hillbillies.)
Another distinctive feature of the clan, which Vance demonstrates perhaps too continually is its instinctive use of, frankly, bad language. The flow of four-letter words J. D. employs throughout may serve, unfortunately, to confirm the accuracy of society’s harsh term, “white trash.” (Or of course it may simply serve as testimony to the general decline of language and standards which we baby-boomers have witnessed and helped usher in.)
This group feels despair, and the resentment despair breeds. Although—or perhaps because—they come from a tightly structured, kinship-bonded community, their behavior both within the family and among their wider communities is often marked by violence, by murderous loyalty. (What, after all, were the legendarily feuding Hatfields and McCoys? Hillbillies.)
One might guess, given the stereotypes about (and particularly given the lack, heretofore, of a voice speaking for) this class of poor whites, that racial animosity is alive and well. Well, no. What is refreshing is that Vance’s collection of autobiographical portraits displays a distinctly class perspective, not a racial one. He reassures us that “this is not a story about why white people have more to complain about than black people or any other group. That said, I hope that readers of this book will take from it an appreciation of how class and family affect the poor without filtering their views through a racial prism.”
Vance pays particular attention to the deleterious effects of one’s home environment on this group’s chances of success. He provides a brief sketch of what the professionals call “Adverse childhood experiences” (ACE’s) which include being sworn at, having something thrown at you, having an alcoholic or drug-user parent, and “watching a loved one be physically abused.” Of the seven behaviors he lists, he admits to 6 of them, as did his sister; his aunt reported seven. This is a difficult family dynamic to overcome. Given the deck stacked against families like this, “Mom is the Vance child who lost the game of statistics. If anything, my family is lucky that only one of them lost that game.”
A harsh family life and challenging upbringing help explain why “hillbillies like me are more down on the future than any other group—some of whom are clearly more destitute than we are.” As a group, they “are more socially isolated than ever before and we pass that isolation down to our children.” And their faith is of marginal help. They now attend “churches that are heavy on emotional rhetoric but light on the kinds of social support necessary to enable poor kids to do well.” The consequences are worst for the men, who “suffer from a peculiar crisis of masculinity in which some of the very traits that our culture inculcates make it difficult to succeed in a changing world.”
Hillbilly “politics”
The economics of the last half century and more have significantly expanded the geographical extent of these once more restricted folks. “Thanks to the massive migration from the poorer regions of Appalachia to places like Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, Pennsylvania and Illinois, hillbilly values spread widely along with hillbilly people.” And so, from an electoral perspective, their views could well play a decisive role in those five electorally-significant states come November.
And in the course of his 264 pages, Vance offers a family perspective on politics. “It was greater Appalachia’s political reorientation from Democratic to Republican that redefine Americana politics after Nixon.” His grandmother’s sour reaction to their fellow townsmen who game the welfare system “was my first indication that the policies of Mamaw’s ‘party of the working man’—the Democrats—weren’t all they were cracked up to be.” His grandfather was far more loyal to his party of choice. The only Republican he ever voted for was Mr. Reagan. Why? “His Democratic opponent, a well-educated Northern liberal, stood in stark cultural contrast to my hillbilly grandfather.” Papaw let class resentment outweigh his traditional politics.
He has his own opinions about the various anti-poverty programs the national government has initiated since the New Deal. He is distressed as well about the sad educational and social consequences of some of its bureaucracy’s rules about what constitutes a family unit. “The current governmental policies, though well-intentioned, simply exacerbate the predicament of many of its intended targets.” He is grateful for Mamaw’s old-age benefits, and appreciates the value of stable parents, but the fundamental problems of this community are beyond government control or its understanding of family dynamics.
One poignant instance of the effect of one’s culture on one’s outlook is seen in Vance’s account of dad’s reaction to his getting into Yale. “He asked whether in my application I had ‘pretended to be a black or a liberal.’ This is how low the cultural expectations of working class white Americans have fallen.”
His lengthy paragraph on President Obama confirms his objective take on hillbillies’ lack of racial animus. Their resentments are color-blind. President Obama “feels like an alien to many Middletonians for reasons that have nothing to do with color.” It’s a matter of class. He feels put off by what he terms the president’s “foreign accent.” (How ironic that a fellow who calls and pronounces his native rural “hollow” the “holler” finds our president’s mastery of “talking white” off-putting!) He also places the president in a wider sociological context. He “came on the scene” just when Hillbillies were realizing “that the modern American meritocracy was not built for them.” In short, Vance asserts, he “strikes at the heart of our deepest insecurities: he’s a good father … he wears a suit to his job, and his wife tells us we should be feeding our children certain foods and we hate her for it … because we know she’s right.” Politics for Vance and his clan are indeed local, tribal and deeply personal.
His actual experience, however, has given Vance a fresh perspective on those inherited tribal politics. Working in the Ohio Statehouse for a “kind [Republican] senator from the Cincinnati area” he “overheard the senator and his staff debate whether a particular bill was good for his constituents, good for his state, or both. Observing the political process from the inside made me appreciate it in a way that watching cable news never had.” Vance is a citizen who thinks for himself and lets direct experience shape his thinking.
• • •
One poignant instance of the effect of one’s culture on one’s outlook is seen in Vance’s account of dad’s reaction to his getting into Yale. “He asked whether in my application I had ‘pretended to be a black or a liberal.’ This is how low the cultural expectations of working class white Americans have fallen.”
One can feel for their tragic predicament and also understand the resentment they might naturally feel, and which Donald Trump (or any savvy politician) is wise to speak to, that in the past half-century the national government has sought to better the lives of historically under-served minorities. He adds to this early insight later in the book when he observes that “working class Americans … are more likely to fall off after they’ve reached the top.” He senses that “the discomfort they feel at leaving behind much of their identity plays a small role” in that problem. As an arrived but insecure successful man, he urges the upper class to “promote social mobility … by opening their hearts and minds to newcomers who don’t quite belong.”
• • •
Vance’s story is ultimately a happy one, thanks in part to a few gifted and involved teachers. Education was a real opportunity, but one that was hard for this class of folks to achieve. As one teacher told him, “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.” His Mamaw was such a wolf, yes, but she was fanatically loyal to her grandson and appreciated the value of an education. Thanks to that determined force-of-nature, J.D. proves to be one of the few instances of a success story—military service, college, a happy secure marriage, and eventually Yale Law School.
Few of his fellow hillbillies were so lucky, and many constitute that bitter contingent of under-educated white working folks who find Trump appealing. Now most of this journal’s common readers have distinct political views, and they should. But The Common Reader eschews any such public stands. Still, a letter to the New York Times from a Gaye Brown, on September 15, responding to the previous day’s article on “Kentucky’s Downtrodden” (Vance’s contingent) deserves mention. Brown fully understands that “given the hardships in their lives they’re entitled to express anger, frustration and despair.” She knows why those desperate emotions may make them ripe for electoral harvesting. But she adds a warning: “When they vote to empower the dangerous Mr. Trump, they won’t just be putting their own lives at stake. Suicide by politician means the rest of us get taken out too.” Her advice to resist various political blandishments is sage advice for all sorts and conditions of voters—hillbillies and plains-dwellers both.
