Hillbilly Elegy: A memoir of a family and culture in crisis by J.D. Vance ~ Book Review

Hillbilly Elegy is the story of the author's growing up white working poor in industrialized Ohio.  His family's story starts out after the war when his grandparents moved from the Appalachian region of Kentucky to Ohio at a time when the industry sector was doing well and they saw an opportunity to make a better life.  They were able to achieve a middle class lifestyle but it was fraught with problems.  Though "upwardly mobile" they never left behind the abuse tendencies, the violence, the addictions.  Eventually when the industries that gained them their middle class status started to shut down, they along with others of their culture found themselves once again facing dire poverty.  The family struggled within the middle class and without it.  The author with the encouragement of his grandmother was able to break the vicious cycle, first by joining the army to gain some discipline in his life and then going on to graduate from Yale Law School but not without still feeling the effects of the trauma of his childhood.

I first picked up this book because I wanted to watch the movie on Netflix but wanted to read the story without the Hollywood's thumbprint on it.  I also wanted to learn about this group of people and their culture because I have no knowledge of them except to know that they are very poor in the Appalachian region.   I had also read (in several reviews, comments and blogs) that the book may answer the connection between Trump's election win and this group of people.  After reading it, I am in the camp that I just doesn't get the hype around this book.  I always find it very hard to review a memoir or autobiography because it is a person's life after all.  A stranger cannot make judgement or review a person's life.  So I guess I look a how the story was told.  This book is not just a memoir in the sense of it being the author's life story (though this author is only in his early '30's), it is also an examination of a culture of Americans, where they came from, what happened and is happening to them as a group, and why they find themselves where they are at within society.  While the parts of the book that told the author's story are heartbreaking and horrifying, these are interspersed with the author's thoughts, ponderings, facts, quotes from other sources, and his ruminations about the region and culture.  He  makes the attempt to  delve into the sociological, psychological, community and faith of the culture to see if he can answer just why they are the way they are and why they find themselves in the situation they do.  The way it was all interspersed throughout the book made it a very choppy read for me.  The language was atrocious, the violence horrible.  The things the author experienced within and from his own family boggles the mind.  But I was left with mixed feelings as his violent addicted mother seemed to painted in a different light than his violent grandmother and his alcohol addicted grandfather.  The thought that no gov't or social agency can fix the problem of the "Hillbilly" or "Redneck" poor, that the answer comes from within seems to be the general theme of his thoughts , but other than the idea of  picking yourself up by the bootstraps and getting disciplined and determined to make it out I can't say that the author offered any other idea or thoughts toward that solution.  A review on the back of the book also said it was "hysterically funny".  I did not find it so even in the remotest sense.  As far as how it explained Trump's win, I did not find that either except it did draw some parallels as to why deep rooted working class poverty and deep rooted generational values can figure into the political game.  I also wonder if this book might paint with a very broad brushstroke the poor from that region of America.  But what do I know, I'm a Canadian.  And this is why I find it so hard to review this kind of book.  In the end I plodded through because I wanted to learn but can't say that I enjoyed the book at all.  

I rated it 6/10