Bill Kerwin's Reviews > Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis

Have you ever wondered what became of the Scotch-Irish, who dug America’s coal, forged America’s steel and built America’s automobiles, who worked for the American Dream Monday through Friday. prayed to The Good Lord on Sunday, and revered F.D.R. and J.F.K. every day of the week? The last thing I heard, they elected Donald Trump. And I am still looking for explanations.

If you want somebody who knows Appalachian culture from inside to explain it all to you, I highly recommend Hillbilly Elegy by J.D. Vance. Vance has his roots in Eastern Kentucky, a troubled childhood in the rustbelt city of Middletown, Ohio, and yet has succeeded in graduating from Ohio State and matriculating from The Yale Law School. He tells us about his family of “crazy hillbillies,” and, in the process of telling us the story of his family, he tells us the story of America too.

The hillbilly seeking the American Dream in industrial Ohio was always “a stranger in a strange land”, for he cleaved to his Appalachian identity—the church in the wildwood, the old folks in the hollers—and returned to the welcoming hills every chance he could get. But economic decline left its mark on both mountain culture and urban manufacturing. Opportunities shrunk, hard liquor was supplemented by painkillers and heroin, church attendance fell and so did belief in the American Dream.

J.D.’s were most powerful influences were his grandparents Mamaw and Papaw: fierce, hard-drinking battlers with a proud belief in individual honor and family solidarity. They might beat their kids, sure, only when they deserved it...but no outsider better say one harsh word to them, much less lay a finger on them. They probably did their own children little good—especially J.D.’s mother, addicted to heroin and a bewildering succession of men—but by the time J.D. needed them they had mellowed a little, and gave him the love and determination he needed to succeed.

The early chapters about family are compelling, but the last few chapters, touching on the cultural hurdles a hillbilly in a high class East Coast law school must overcome, are fascinating too. J.D. shows us how many things the upper middle class takes for granted—how to dress for an interview, how to schmooze a prospective employer, how to strive for what you really want not what you’re supposed to want—are difficult for a young man from a poor background.

J.D. Vance’s insights are noteworthy not only because of his family background but also because of his political philosophy. He is a conservative, one of those cautious, reflective conservatives who are growing increasingly rare these days. (Former Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels is one of his heroes, David Frum is a former employer and mentor). He is critical of specific government practices (the high barriers grandparent’s face if they wish to be foster parents, for example), but he also realizes that government has a role—although limited—in raising the Appalachian people from poverty. The major responsibility, however, he puts squarely on the shoulders on the hillbilly himself:

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.

Here is where the rhetoric of modern conservatives (and I say this as one of them) fails to meet the real challenges of their biggest constituents. Instead of encouraging engagement, conservatives increasingly foment the kind of detachment that has sapped the ambition of so many of my peers...What separates the successful from the unsuccessful are the expectations that they had for their own lives. Yet the message of the right is increasingly: It’s not your fault that you’re a loser; it’s the government’s fault.