J. D. VanceRecensioni

"This was my world: a world of truly irrational behavior. We spend our way into the poorhouse. We buy giant TVs and iPads...Thrift is inimical to our being...Our homes are a chaotic mess. We scream and yell at each other like we're spectators at a football game. At least one member of the family uses drugs...At especially stressful times, we'll hit and punch each other, all in front of the rest of the family, including young children...We don't study as children, and we don't make our kids study when we're parents. Our kids perform poorly at school. We might get angry with them, but we never give them the tools -- like peace and quiet at home -- to succeed....We choose not to work when we should be looking for jobs. Sometimes we'll get a job, but it won't last. We'll get fired for tardiness, or for stealing merchandise and selling it on eBay, or for having a customer complain about the smell of alcohol on our breath, or for taking five thirty-minute restroom breaks per shift. We talk about the value of hard work but tell ourselves that the reason we're not working is some perceived unfairness: Obama shut down the coal mines, or all the jobs went to the Chinese...We talk to our children about responsibility, but we never walk the walk."

I've been waiting to read this of-the-moment book, and grabbed it when I saw it on my library's Speed Read shelf. As I started reading it, I realized it wasn't exactly what I was expecting. I was expecting something that was part memoir, part social history, but this book is almost entirely memoir.

I read this book specifically looking for insight into the lives angry, white, working-class population that comprises Donald Trump's base. On that measure, I can't say that I come away from the book with any better understanding than I had at the beginning. No aha! moments aside from own hypotheses going into the book. Perhaps something more academic like [b:White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America|27209433|White Trash The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America|Nancy Isenberg|https://d2arxad8u2l0g7.cloudfront.net/books/1453059367s/27209433.jpg|47250924] would provide more answers.

LT Title of Book, Author, Publisher, year of publication, dates I read/studied book
Recommended by [if anybody], Where is hard copy?

Theme:
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Value:
Age:
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Synopsis/Noteworthy:

3 embrace of cultural tradition
193-4 trusting institutions
220 social capital chap 13
22-2 mannersw
237 Christianity
243 courts 261
249 pajamas
256 what can we do?

It’s weird to read autobiography of a 40-yr-old. It starts off rather mundane but picks up nicely as you get further along.

Strange to have read this and related closely to the author’s experiences, yet come to such different political and ethical perspectives than he touts on social media. One of those books that I wish I hadn’t looked into the author so much because it kind of ruined the read for me.

A more conservative view than Sarah Smarsh's on the inequalities that keep the white working class from participating to the American Dream, but a moving, heartfelt and enlightening one nonetheless. At least, the author acknowledges that European Countries with a strong socialdemocratic take on social welfare do the American Dream better than America.
It's very instructive to hear, for once, the voice of hillbillies or any other neglected groups speaking for themselves, as subject of action rather than object of policy. Or worse, horror movie pitchfork crowds with fiddles...

Wow. I found this book so moving. J.D. Vance intimately details the obstacles faced by both himself and his fellow hillbillies (his words) when attempting to claw their way out of poverty and hopelessness. In doing so, he paints a loving and searingly honest portrait of a culture steeped in values of honour and family ties, yet stymied by a kind of learned helplessness following the successive economic downturns of the last three decades. Vance is adamant that while external circumstances (and he chronicles these in detail) stack the deck against America's working-class whites, individual choices play a significant role in determining anyone's future. And he continually reinforces the positive impact a few strong and positive people can have on a kid's life.

I am left full of admiration for Vance and full of love for his extended Appalachian clan, warts and all.

A quick and interesting insight into life growing up in the Rust Belt. Some of the stories were compelling insights into the types of families and lives that some of my friends since moving to Chicago 9 years ago have had (often that were completely absent when I lived in New Jersey), and helped contextualize for me some aspects of middle American culture that seem contradictory to an outsider. Overall, it wasn't a life-altering book, but worth the time it took to read for sure, despite the author's tendency to ramble a bit and repeat himself at times.

Using rather basic language, the author relates the story of growing up in Appalachia and the way in which poverty isn't just a condition but a state of mind. I highly recommend The Mitford Series (fiction), by Jan Karon, to get another glimpse of and perspective into this unique world.

Not a particularly polished writer, but he makes his point. It's tough to pull yourself up by your bootstraps if you don't have boots.

There's a good reason why Hillbilly Elegy recently rocketed to the top of amazon's bestseller list. Democrats eager for an explanation why their candidate lost to Donald Trump expect to find it in the tale of a broken family and even more broken society in the Rust Belt and hills of Kentucky.

I started reading Hillbilly Elegy a couple of days before the election of Donald Trump and finished it a few days after.

I read it on the advice of the eastern “elites” who suggested that Vance’s poignant autobiography would give some hint as to the popularity of Trump in the face of screaming evidence that he has neither temperament nor any decent ideas to bring to the Presidency.

Like others I desperately sought answers.

Instead I found humour, tragedy, pathos, and redemption. Standard fare in pretty good books, but no relief to my angst over the election results.

It has also left me with maybe a little fear that the White House is now in the hands of hillbillies (in this case, Hillbillies from the Hamptons), and now I know what that means.

As much as I enjoyed Vance’s tale, I can’t for a second believe the moral of the story: if hillbillies want to climb out of poverty, drug dependency, and broken families they shouldn't look for public support. The Gov’t ain’t got no answers.

Granted Vance comes from the part of the country which don’t trust no “ReveNOOers.” But facts are facts. Education works. Sometimes professional healthcare is needed, including mental health care.

It’s great if family members pitch in, but sometimes they don’t, or don’t know what works and what doesn’t.

No matter what you think, in fact often government can deliver the services faster and cheaper than higgledy-piggledy community services. And granted sometimes government doesn’t do it well.
But the government, especially municipal government are your neighbours for goodness sakes. And Vance made big strides with the help of outsiders himself.

He just doesn’t get by the distrust for government. He doesn’t make the connection between public servants like his teachers and the politicians and judges he worked for and government with the big ‘G’. A man who served loyally in the Marines, who knows what collective action must mean, even if he might have questioned his country’s ultimate role in iraq.

Vance talks in so many cliches, the biggest one being “working-class” Americans as if there was ever a clear divide between people who don’t work and people who do work. That might have made sense in Edwardian England but it was never true of America.

Those blue-collar jobs aren’t coming back. Something must replace them, and somehow the work ethic outside of the home must come back too. And replace the sense of victimisation.

Ultimately I don't think Vance's book answers some of the big questions about Trump's victory. Indeed in the hill country of Kentucky we see the same distrust of government that Trump played upon but that is nothing new and not unique to Trump. It's been going on for a long time and has been a staple of Republican rhetoric and talk radio for a very long time.

I'm more likely going to re-read Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlett Letter or maybe Arthur Miller's The Crucible to rediscover the society which is suspicious of everything, possibly because the frontier is so spooky, and possibly because Americans treat their own government as if it were filled with witches and warlocks.

I grew up in Southern Indiana, a stone's throw from these folks, and fully appreciate the struggles JD Vance endured. I remember going to the hollers of Kentucky as a child to visit distant relatives (?). They had a outhouse. To me, it was a different planet. While I was the first one in my family to go to college, there was never any doubt that I would rise with the tide and fulfill the dreams my parents had for me. Now, on the other side, I still visit those people and places in my love of Southern writing and stories about small rural towns and their community solidarity. But it's good to be on the outside looking in.

It was ok but could have been much better. Not sure I read anything that particularly surprised me (well, his personal success story in the face of significant challenges was wonderful) but it would have made for a better narrative had the book been more carefully edited. For example, I didn't need to hear him repeat his mother's problems for the nth time. And much of the material was irrelevant. Between these two things (duplication and irrelevance), it was a chore to finish.

This is an interesting personal memoir, but not the fascinating insight into the Trump movement that NPR led me to expect. It’s a well-written, sometimes moving, always affectionate, look at the family and community of a man who was raised in a poor, working-class area, but who managed to graduate from law school at Yale. It seems honest, and he doesn’t shy away from the ugliness, but neither does he wallow in it. He has interesting things to say, but there’s no point in detailing it, as it’s already been well covered. The New Yorker and the National Review both did a good job from their respective ideologies.

I was most interested in his discussion of the barriers to success, both societal and self-imposed, faced by the poor white working-class. Not just barriers to becoming a rich Yale graduate, but even just the challenges to achieving middle class status with a decent, steady job.

I have no idea why this book is rated so high? I listened to it and I strongly suggest no one does this. The author reads it and he is simply horrible. No inflection or personality whatsoever. They obviously wanted to save money and it shows.

J. D. Vance (Author, Narrator)
A memoir bit political

Compelling as far as memoirs go, though there is some redundancy and meandering, indicatingan insufficient editorial engagement. More problematic to me is the author's attempts to move from personal/family history and introspection into social and political analysis. Many claims and data are not backed up with sources and there are more than a few astonishing assertions that actually made me shut the book and put it away for awhile. One of the most offensive is the statement that "Hillbillies" didn't have an issue with Obama because he was black, but because unlike them he wore a suit to work. Obama wore the uniform of the Presidency like Bush before him and Trump after him. The suit was not why some people were so hostile to him and to posit that and other similar arguments in order to eliminate any possibility of racism, is horribly disingenuous in a memoir attempting to be real and revelatory.

SETTING: Appalachians in Jackson, Kentucky.

Hm! My review for this has completely disappeared. 2/6/2023.

Fascinating story! Today, since 2023, J.D. Vance is a conservative U.S. Senator of Ohio, helping the fight to save our country.

I don’t agree with his politics, but it was a well written, at least. It’s the whole “rags-to-riches” spiel told by a white man, so it’s kind of uninteresting. I also think that this story would be more compelling if he had experienced his childhood deep in Appalachia, like in East Tennessee, but he really just grew up in an outer-ring suburb of Columbus (so, the Midwest). Basically, I don’t think it’s fair to call it a hillbilly elegy just because his grandparents are from the Ohio/Kentucky border.

I think I wish Vance had set out to write a true memoir. Hillbilly Elegy is at its best in those autobiographical moments -- you really feel for teenage Vance, his poor sister/surrogate-mother and his matriarch figure of a grandmother. Many memoirs increase their narrative power by adding analysis, but in Vance's case, I think the result is less than the sum of its parts. When he switches to political or socioeconomic commentary he takes an extremely preachy tone, which I think is not necessarily warranted by the narrative.

Although I would consider this book a four-star work (all for the memoir portions), three sentences really detracted for me. It's highly unusual for me to have such a visceral reaction to a single sentence, much less more than once in a book, but here we are:

1. In the very beginning (and then repeatedly throughout), Vance talks about how "Hillbillies" are culturally distinct from African Americans as a way of justifying their poverty behavior, but not that of African Americans...and then thoroughly fails to prove that. Through years of serving the poor urban African American population as a physician, I found everything Vance talked about as unique to Appalachian whites to resonate about the subset of poor, urban African Americans well. I think the two populations are extremely similar in their Protestant ethics, historic participation in the labor portion of the workforce and disenchantment with the American Dream. I don't know why this bothers me so much, except that it really smacks of White exceptionalism -- even when we're poor, we're special!

2. Vance talks about how patriotic he is and then says essentially that no one on the "Acela corridor" would ever understand that feeling. First of all, the generalization that the Acela corridor is all wealthy, white liberals needs to stop -- I meet plenty of disadvantaged people right here in my Acela-ified city. But secondly, OK, I'm white, I'm Jewish, I've never been working class in my life, I went to a hippy liberal arts college and I'm a doctor, so I'm the epitome of the Acela corridor and I think I've figured out patriotism just fine, thanks.

3. He talks about the loss of American heros. True, the days of astronauts and politicians being the heros instead of teenybopper singers and actors are over (assuming the past was ever truly like that.) but then he brings up Obama. To me, Obama is the American hero of our generation -- a brilliant, charismatic, young president, who pulled the economy out of a death spiral, brought healthcare to millions, brought about the legalization of gay marriage, doubled the number of female supreme court justices in the history of the country and did it all while keeping his nose incredibly clean. To Vance, Obama is an "alien." Not because he's black, Vance hastens, but because he's well-spoken and highly educated. Yes, this is the complaint of someone who less than 50 pages prior said that what the Appalachians need is an American politician hero. But, apparently not a well-spoken, highly-educated (black) one. If you think there's racism between those lines, well, I'm with you.

I kept wondering if I'd cut Vance more slack if I didn't know that he was a Republican, but the fact of the matter is that overall, I felt like he didn't read between his own lines. He talks about his understanding of learned helplessness, but then is dumbfounded when his neighbors won't commit to jobs. He talks about how he believes culture drags down everyone in it, but then says that he thinks the best that can happen is placing a thumb on the scale for disadvantaged kids, rather than the evidence-based practices, like housing-first that's been shown to intervene on culture.

It's not all bad -- some of Vance's comments are both critical and point out a recurrent problem I see in my own larger community: especially an unawareness of need-based aid for college by those who actually need it and the way that community college and other less prestigious institutions often cost more, rather than less for the working class and come with less of the unwritten benefits. Overall, I found Vance bracingly honest and reflective about his own experience growing up in the working class, but I wish he would think about generalizing his experience beyond the Appalachians.

For the life of me, I can't understand why this book has been so popular. It is a self-congratulating memoir. He does make some value judgments about the white working class. Otherwise, he is chronicling his rise to success against all the odds.

The title of the book is a misnomer. Hillbilly Elegy is an autobiography of someone who grew up in the Rust Belt, Middletown Ohio, with family who hails from Eastern Kentucky.

While it is disappointing that it doesn't seem to offer any solutions politically, viewed strictly as a memoir, it succeeds. It's a real bummer that he ended up being a self-interested shitbird. In retrospect it makes sense that he wouldn't propose any solutions, since he ran on a platform that doesn't try to fix anything.

I heard much in the media about how this book explains the Trump voter. I wouldn't say it's the be all, end all explanation but it does give an insider look at Appalachian culture and the reality of low-income Americans. As the author points out, government policies can help low income families to a certain degree, but politics is not set up to acknowledge their cultural barriers to attaining a better life.

Well written very personal story of dealing with and rising above a childhood that should have been better. How the other half lives. Outside of my personal experience, but glad I read it.

An interesting perspective on what it's like to become successful in the face of poverty, childhood trauma and familial instability. Vance's portrait of the impoverished Appalachian communities is one worth reading - not only does he provide insight having actually been there, he understands that getting out is a lot easier said than done. In my opinion he never tries to say his experience is somehow better or worse than that of any other impoverished community and he fully recognizes that a lot of his ability to make the life he has was a product of certain privilege. There's a lot to learn here, especially that the problems America faces in these communities is a lot deeper and systematic that what social policy may have the ability to change.

This book is part memoir, part sociological treatise with a much heavier emphasis on the former. Vance was born in Jackson, Kentucky and raised in a small town in Ohio. A self-described "hillbilly", he survives a tumultuous childhood (think parade of step fathers, drug addicted mother, multiple moves) thanks mostly to his strong bond with his grandmother, Mamaw.

Vance manages to survive his childhood and attend Yale Law School. He describes his life and the obstacles he faced and then extrapolates his experiences to that of the working class people of this geographic area. He describes people who are independent, proud, tough, and yet also terrible decision makers. His observations will probably resonate more with conservatives than liberals, but his book really isn't political. He paints a picture of the poor working class families and simply observes that it is truly hard to solve the type of systemic problems that they face. It is interesting how there is a combination of internal cultural issues combined with external "the world has changed" factors that create sometimes seemingly insurmountable problems.

Vance shows us a world that is often hidden and that elites often denigrate through his unique lens - - having personally stood on both sides of the spectrum. I found his perspective and his writing to be fascinating and most importantly, nuanced.

But mostly, he tells us a story of a man who overcame numerous obstacles and bucked the odds. Who doesn't like a story like that?

On another note, this book would be an excellent book club read. There's plenty to talk about. One question I would immediately ask is "Does Vance give credit to the right people for his success? Discuss."