Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis by J.D. Vance. Harper Paperbacks. 291 pages. 2018
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I read this book when it was first released, and again recently as Vance, now a U.S. Senator from Ohio, has been named as the Republican Vice-Presidential nominee.
This is Vance’s incredible story of growing up poor in the Rust Belt, in an Ohio steel town that has been hemorrhaging jobs and hope for as long as he can remember. His grandparents, neither of whom graduated from high school, raised him. He almost failed out of high school. He served as a Marine in Iraq and graduated from Yale Law School, and is a Scots-Irish hillbilly at heart.

He writes that the book is about what goes on in the lives of real people when the industrial economy goes south. It’s about reacting to bad circumstances in the worst way possible. It’s about a culture that increasingly encourages social decay instead of counteracting it. His primary aim is to tell a true story about what that problem feels like when you were born with it hanging around your neck. The book is not just a personal memoir but a family one—a history of opportunity and upward mobility viewed through the eyes of a group of hillbillies from Appalachia. There are no villains in Vance’s story, just a ragtag band of hillbillies struggling to find their way—both for their sake and, by the grace of God, for his.
He writes that in Jackson, Kentucky he was the grandson of the toughest woman anyone knew and the most skilled auto mechanic in town. In Middleton, Ohio he was the abandoned son of a man he hardly knew and a woman he wished he didn’t.
He writes that his grandparents—Mamaw and Papaw—were, without question or qualification, the best things that ever happened to him.  They spent the last two decades of their lives showing him the value of love and stability and teaching him the life lessons that most people learn from their parents.
Vance’s father gave him up for adoption when he was six years old. That began a constant revolving door of men that his mother was involved with, as she married five times. Vance has always been very close to his sister Lindsay. J.D. and Lindsay didn’t live a peaceful life in a small nuclear family. They lived a chaotic life in big groups of aunts, uncles, grandparents, and cousins.
Eventually the never-ending conflict at home (including his mother’s failed suicide attempt, alcohol and drug abuse), began to take its toll as J.D. started doing poorly in school and it affected his health.
Of all the things that he hated about his childhood, nothing compared to the revolving door of father figures. Caught between various dad candidates, J.D. and his sister never learned how a man should treat a woman.
J.D. would later reunite with his biological father, who was a Christian. This led to J.D.’s growing faith, though sadly, in the church they attended, he heard more about the gay lobby and the war on Christmas than about any particular character trait that a Christian should aspire to have. The church required so little of him he tells us that it was easy for him to be a Christian.
He writes of Papaw’s death permanently altering the trajectory of their family.
J.D. would live with Mamaw for three years in high school. He writes that those years saved him.
Mamaw died when J.D. was in the Marines. Afterwards, his mother descended to the same place she’d traveled after Papaw’s death.
Vance would go on to graduate from Ohio State University. When he returned to Middleton to earn money before attending Yale Law School, he tells us that the incredible optimism he felt about his own life contrasted starkly with the pessimism of so many of his neighbors.
He had never felt out of place in his entire life, but he did at Yale. Part of it had to do with social class. It was at Yale that he met and fell in love with future wife Usha.
He writes of being grateful for his grandparents’ constant presence. Despite the revolving door of would-be father figures, he was often surrounded by caring and kind men. Even with her faults, his mother instilled in him a lifelong love of education and learning. His sister always protected him. And his Aunt Wee and her husband Dan opened their home to him when he was too afraid to ask.
He writes that his mom is healthier and happier than she’s been in a very long time. She was present at the Republican National Convention when Vance was introduced as the Republican Vice-Presidential nominee. There, he introduced her and said that she had been sober for ten years.
Vance offers suggestions on how to improve life for the poor. He writes that the fundamental question of our domestic politics over the next generation is how to continue to protect our society’s less fortunate while simultaneously enabling advancement and mobility for everyone.
Hillbilly Elegy tells Vance’s incredible story, which continues to this day.
Warning: the book contains a large amount of adult language, often, but not always, from the mouth of Mamaw.