Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis is a 2016 memoir by JD Vance about the Appalachian values of his family from Kentucky and the socioeconomic problems of his hometown of Middletown, Ohio, where his mother's parents moved when they were young.
Vance describes his upbringing and family background while growing up in Middletown, Ohio, a small city between Cincinnati and Dayton. He writes about a family history of poverty and manual labor jobs, and compares this life with his perspective after leaving it.
Vance was born and raised in Middletown, where his mother and her family had moved after World War II from Breathitt County, Kentucky. Vance states that their Appalachian culture valued traits such as loyalty and love of country despite family violence and verbal abuse. Vance recounts his grandparents' alcoholism as well as his mother's history of drug addictions and failed relationships. Vance's grandparents reconciled and became his guardians. His strict but loving grandmother pushed Vance, who went on to complete undergraduate studies at The Ohio State University and earned a law degree from Yale Law School.[2]
In his personal history, Vance raises questions about the responsibility of his family and local people for their misfortunes. Vance suggests that hillbilly culture fosters social disintegration and economic insecurity in Appalachia. He cites personal experiences: working as a grocery store cashier, Vance saw welfare recipients talking on cell phones, but he could not afford one.[2]
Vance's antipathy toward those who seemed to profit from poor behavior while he struggled is presented as a rationale for Appalachia's political swing from voting Democratic to a strong Republican affiliation. Vance tells stories highlighting the lack of work ethic of the local people, including the story of a man who quit his job after expressing dislike over his work hours, as well as a co-worker with a pregnant girlfriend who would skip work unexcused.[2]
Publication
In July 2016, Hillbilly Elegy was popularized by an interview with Vance in The American Conservative.[3] The volume of requests briefly disabled the website. Halfway through August, The New York Times wrote that the title had remained in the top ten Amazon bestsellers since the interview's publication.[2]
American Conservative contributor and blogger Rod Dreher expressed admiration for Hillbilly Elegy, saying that Vance "draws conclusions... that may be hard for some people to take. But Vance has earned the right to make those judgments. This was his life. He speaks with authority that has been extremely hard won."[7] The following month, Dreher posted about his theories about why liberals loved the book.[8]New York Post columnist and editor of CommentaryJohn Podhoretz described the book as among the year's most provocative.[9]
The book was positively received by conservatives such as National Review columnist Mona Charen[10] and National Review editor and Slate columnist Reihan Salam.[11] By contrast, other journalists criticized Vance for generalizing too much from his personal upbringing in suburban Ohio.[12][13][14][15]Jared Yates Sexton of Salon criticized Vance for his "damaging rhetoric" and for endorsing policies used to "gut the poor". He argues that Vance "totally discounts the role racism played in the white working class's opposition to President Obama."[16] Sarah Jones of The New Republic mocked Vance as "the false prophet of Blue America," dismissing him as "a flawed guide to this world" and the book as little more than "a list of myths about welfare queens repackaged as a primer on the white working class."[13]
Historian Bob Hutton wrote in Jacobin that Vance's argument relied on circular logic and eugenics, ignored existing scholarship on Appalachian poverty, and was "primarily a work of self-congratulation."[12]Sarah Smarsh with The Guardian noted that "most downtrodden whites are not conservative male Protestants from Appalachia" and called into question Vance's generalizations about the white working class from his personal upbringing.[14]
The New York Times wrote that Vance's confrontation of a social taboo was admirable, regardless of whether the reader agreed with his conclusions. The newspaper wrote that Vance's subject is despair, and his argument was more generous in that it blames fatalism and learned helplessness rather than indolence.[2]
A 2017 Brookings Institution report noted that "J. D. Vance's Hillbilly Elegy became a national bestseller for its raw, emotional portrait of growing up in and eventually out of a poor rural community riddled by drug addiction and instability." Vance's account anecdotally confirmed the report's conclusion that family stability is essential to upward mobility.[17]
The book provoked a response in the form of an anthology, Appalachian Reckoning: A Region Responds to Hillbilly Elegy, edited by Anthony Harkins and Meredith McCarroll. The essays in the volume criticize Vance for making broad generalizations and reproducing myths about poverty.[15]
In an interview with Süddeutsche Zeitung in July 2023, German chancellor Olaf Scholz called the book "a very touching personal story of how a young man with poor starting conditions makes his way." Scholz said the book had moved him to tears, but that he found the positions Vance later took to be "tragic."[18]
Relationship to Donald Trump
A key reason for Hillbilly Elegy's widespread popularity following its publication in 2016 was its role in explaining Donald Trump's rise to the top of the Republican Party.[19] In particular, it purported to explain why white, working-class voters became attracted to Trump as a political leader.[20] Vance himself offered commentary on how his book provides perspective on why a voter from the "hillbilly" demographic would support Trump.[21]
Although he does not mention Trump in the book, Vance openly criticized the now-former president while discussing his memoir in interviews following its release.[22] Vance walked these comments back when he joined the 2022 U.S. Senate race in Ohio, and later openly endorsed Trump.[23][24] In July 2024, Vance was picked by Trump to be his running mate on the Republican ticket for the 2024 U.S. presidential election.[25]
Renewed attention
After Vance was announced as Trump's running mate in 2024, sales of the book and viewership for the film on Netflix increased dramatically.[26]
In July 2024, a widely shared post on social media site Twitter falsely claimed that a passage in Hillbilly Elegy described Vance having sexual intercourse with a rubber glove secured between cushions on a couch.[27][28] The Associated Press released a fact check titled "No, JD Vance did not have sex with a couch" on July 24,[29] but later retracted it on July 25.[28]
A film adaptation was released in select theaters in the United States on November 11, 2020, then digitally on Netflix on November 24. It was directed by Ron Howard and stars Glenn Close, Amy Adams, Gabriel Basso[31][32] and Haley Bennett. Although a few days of filming were done in the book's setting of Middletown, Ohio,[33] much of the filming in the summer of 2019 was in Atlanta, Clayton and Macon, Georgia, using the code name "IVAN."[34][35]
References
^Howard, Ron (November 24, 2020), Hillbilly Elegy (Drama), Amy Adams, Glenn Close, Gabriel Basso, Imagine Entertainment, Netflix, retrieved July 15, 2024