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A review by theinquisitxor
Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis by J.D. Vance
2.0
I decided to read this mainly because I read What You Are Getting Wrong About Appalachia by Elizabeth Catte over the summer, and Catte's book is a response to Hillbilly Elegy . I wanted to have a better understanding of why books like Hillbilly Elegy are detrimental to the people actively doing work in the Appalachian region and beyond.
Vance paints a very narrow and stereotypical portrait of the poor white American living in an Appalachian region. Of course, the reality is much more nuanced than how Vance tells it, completely omitting the history of workers rights, unionization, wars, environmental crises, bad government, and much much more that has contributed to this demographic being is what it is today. Vance just seems to chalk it up to laziness, stupidity, drugs, and hopelessness.
While I don't inherently agree with Vance's political beliefs, I can certainly respect a person who has built themselves up from poverty and hard work. However, Vance's recent spiral down the toilet bowl of Trump makes me unable to look past that. It seems that since writing this he has lost any spark of originality and self, and has just become another hard right-wing zealot.
While this was certainly entertaining (and I can understand how it appealed to audiences in 2016), I really can't stand the hypocrisy of the author, nor the damage that it has done to people actively working on improving Appalachia.
Vance paints a very narrow and stereotypical portrait of the poor white American living in an Appalachian region. Of course, the reality is much more nuanced than how Vance tells it, completely omitting the history of workers rights, unionization, wars, environmental crises, bad government, and much much more that has contributed to this demographic being is what it is today. Vance just seems to chalk it up to laziness, stupidity, drugs, and hopelessness.
While I don't inherently agree with Vance's political beliefs, I can certainly respect a person who has built themselves up from poverty and hard work. However, Vance's recent spiral down the toilet bowl of Trump makes me unable to look past that. It seems that since writing this he has lost any spark of originality and self, and has just become another hard right-wing zealot.
While this was certainly entertaining (and I can understand how it appealed to audiences in 2016), I really can't stand the hypocrisy of the author, nor the damage that it has done to people actively working on improving Appalachia.