What we learned about JD Vance from Hillbilly Elegy

JD Vance’s 2016 memoir, a reflection on white working-class America, returned to the top of the bestseller charts after he was announced as Donald Trump’s running mate this week.

The book was first published just months before Trump’s victory in the 2016 presidential election – even though Vance was not a fan of his new boss at the time.

Critics and commentators on both the political left and right praised the memoir for helping to explain the anger and frustrations in rural America that fueled the surge in support for Trump. But others argued the book was full of manipulative stories and “ugly stereotypes.”

What is “Hillbilly Elegy” by JD Vance about?

Political change in the Appalachians

The book describes the life of the young Vance, as he himself writes, “in a steel town in Ohio where, as far as I can remember, jobs and hopes were being lost.”

Vance describes the political change in Appalachia from a Democratic stronghold to a Republican stronghold, interwoven with stories from his turbulent family life and the general despair that prevails in the decaying communities.

Childhood in poverty and abuse

Vance describes a childhood of poverty and abuse in Middletown, Ohio. His mother struggled with a crippling drug addiction.

In one story from the book, Vance recounts how his mother was driving her car and “accelerating to what felt like 100 miles an hour and telling me she was going to wreck the car and kill us both,” he writes. In another story, she once frightened Vance so much that he fled to a stranger’s house for fear she would kill him.

Vance’s mother had a number of boyfriends, which made his upbringing even more unstable.

“Revolving door of father figures”

His parents divorced when he was six years old. He says that his mother told him then that he would never see his biological father again.

“I have never felt so sad,” he wrote. “Of all the things I hated about my childhood, nothing compared to the revolving door of father figures.”

His adoptive father was a drunkard. In one story from the book, Vance describes how his father came home drunk again and his mother poured lighter fluid on him and lit a match. The children had to put out the fire and amazingly, Vance’s father was unharmed.

Raised by grandparents

In 10th grade, Vance moved out of his mother’s house and lived with his grandparents, whom he affectionately calls “Mamaw” and “Papaw.”

His grandmother inspired Vance to rise above his circumstances by finding a job and devoting himself to his studies.

“We didn’t have cell phones or nice clothes, but Mamaw made sure I had one of those graphing calculators. It taught me an important lesson about Mamaw’s values ​​and forced me to engage with school in a way I never had before,” he writes.

Mamaw taught Vance, “Never be like those damn losers who think the cards are stacked against them.”

Union Democrats

His grandparents were Trade Union Democrats However, this did not stop Vance from expressing his sincere gratitude to his grandmother for the influence she had on his life in his victory speech when he was elected to the U.S. Senate in 2022.

“You will not always agree with every vote I take, and you will not agree with every single amendment I introduce in the United States Senate, but I will never forget the woman who raised me,” he said.

Views on homosexuals

In the book, Vance says that as a boy he once convinced himself he was gay. His grandmother reassured him that he wasn’t, just that he was too young to be attracted to women. And she said that if he was gay, “God would still love you.”

“We don’t work, although we should be looking for work”

In the book, which was made into a 2020 Oscar-nominated film directed by Ron Howard, Vance blames “hillbilly” culture for the social decay he witnessed around him during his childhood.

“We spend ourselves into poverty,” he wrote. “We buy huge TVs and iPads. Our children wear nice clothes thanks to high-interest credit cards and short-term loans. We buy houses we don’t need, refinance them to spend more money, and declare bankruptcy, often leaving behind a lot of junk. Thrift is harmful to our nature.”

Yale and beyond

Vance managed to avoid the fate he feared so much in his book. He joined the Marines, served in Iraq, and won a scholarship to Yale Law School. There, Professor Amy Chua – the author of the bestselling memoir about her parents – Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother—persuaded him to write down his life story so far.

“I was astonished by the lack of opportunities for advancement for kids like me at elite institutions like Yale,” Vance told the Associated Press in 2016.

“I was convinced that writing an honest, sometimes painful book would draw attention to these serious issues. A more abstract essay would not have had the same impact.”

reception

The book enjoyed great popularity in the summer of 2016. Rod Dreher, editor in chief of The American Conservative, called it the most important book of the year. “You can’t understand what’s happening now without first reading JD Vance,” he wrote.

However, the book also faced harsh criticism. Silas House, chair of Appalachian studies at Berea College in Kentucky, told Politico in 2020 that Hillbilly Elegy was “not a memoir, but a treatise that deals with ugly stereotypes and tropes and explains less the political rise of Trump than the actual beginning of Vance’s political rise.”

Sarah Jones wrote in the New Republic in November 2016 that Vance’s portrayal of Appalachia was lazy and flawed. “Elegy is little more than a list of myths about welfare recipients, repackaged as an introduction to the white working class. Vance’s central argument is that the rednecks themselves are to blame for their problems,” she wrote.

Vance was asked for comment by Newsweek.