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A review by safekeeper
Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis by J.D. Vance
1.0
I seem to remember I picked this up in 2016 when you-know-who won the presidential election, and this book was touted as an explanation for how he could have won. Hillbilly Elegy is a captivating and really valuable insight into Appalachia... Or so I thought when I first read this and didn't know any better. Since then I've read What you are getting wrong about Appalachia by E. Catte and other sources on how inaccurately the region is portrayed, and how the author, JD Vance, is not even from Appalachia in the first place and apparently didn't spend much time there. He is, by the way, despised in the region, probably for good reason.
The book itself is largelly poverty porn, focusing on the negatives of life in Appalachia while stereotyping and blaming the Appalachians for their own misfortunes, also blaming them for bringing the 45th president of the USA to power, neglecting to mention how heavy voter supression is in the Appalachian states.
The rags-to-riches story of the protagonist is interesting enough, I suppose, but the way he consistently looks down on the social class he left behind and blames them for their own misfortunates definitely sours it for me.
The book itself is largelly poverty porn, focusing on the negatives of life in Appalachia while stereotyping and blaming the Appalachians for their own misfortunes, also blaming them for bringing the 45th president of the USA to power, neglecting to mention how heavy voter supression is in the Appalachian states.
The rags-to-riches story of the protagonist is interesting enough, I suppose, but the way he consistently looks down on the social class he left behind and blames them for their own misfortunates definitely sours it for me.