by J.D. Vance, 2016
I wanted to read this book for a long time. I once had it from a Little Free Library but redistributed it before I read it. Once Trump selected him as his Vice Presidential running mate, I put it on hold at the library.
Fantastic book! True story about his life in Middletown, Ohio, with roots and visits to Jackson, Kentucky. His grandparents, Mamaw and Papaw, Mamaw pronounced “Ma’am maw”, moved from Jackson, Kentucky to Ohio in search of a better life. Papaw got a job in the steel mill, Armco. He was a drunk when he wasn’t working and eventually changed his ways and was a good grandpa to J.D., but his unpredictability, addictions, and violence passed on to JD’s mom. She was a good mom at first but then become a drug addict and was a terribly mom. JD was raised by his grandma mostly, Mamaw. She was a smoking, cussing, mean, gun-toting grandma but she loved JD and was always there for him, when no one else was. It’s a story of the culture of poverty and the ignorance, violence, addictions, angers, blaming, abusiveness, hopelessness, laziness goes on and on. He grew up with it, he lived it, he knows it. Somehow, he broke the chain in his family. He had a good older sister, Lindsey, who protected him and cared for him. He had his Mamaw and Papaw, especially his Mamaw who always told him he could do it. He had a few members of his family who showed him there was a different way to live. He joined the Marines and served 4 years, including time in Iraq, right after high school. He could have gone to college but he knew he wasn’t ready for that. He went back to college 4 years later and then on to law school. He applied to Yale and got in and received a scholarship and financial aid that made it affordable. He is only 40 years old, born 8/2/1984, and is the VP candidate for the Republican Party for the 2024 election. He could save us if Trump, please God, NO!, gets elected again.
Lots of firsthand pictures of the poor white people of the Rust Belt. Good look at them. Maybe having J.D. Vance, one of their own, being a voice of reason out there, might pull them out of the muck and mire they live in. I pray so. God bless J.D. Vance.
Page 7: He describes a young white man who quit a good job with good benefits that could have supported his wife and baby to be, because he was basically lazy. And then the young man blamed others for his plight. He says this is the way they feel – no control over their lives, no “agency,” and then blame everyone else for the plight they are in.
Page 18 and 19, he describes the town of Jackson, Kentucky, where his Mamaw and Papaw and their ancestors are from. He visits relatives there often. It’s beautiful but the opioid crisis has taken root. He walks past a house, a skinny man on the front porch; mean dogs that look malnourished chained up out front; old furniture strewn around the dirt yard; but worst of all, 8 pairs of eyes looking out the windows with fear and longing.
Page 20 and 21, he talks about the contradictions in Jackson, Kentucky: full of nice people but also full of drug addicts, beauty but then trash scattered all around, hard workers but then the welfare recipients not interested in working. And the hillbilly values have spread all around the rust belt because the move north by so many of them. He talks about Mountain Dew mouth because hillbilly mothers put Mountain Dew in their babies’ bottles.
Page 57, he writes about how attitudes about hard work are prevalent and that the very people who never work and mooch from neighbors and the government will talk about the importance of hard work. A survey done in 2012 showed that working class whites work more hours than college educated whites, but that isn’t true. They based that on survey results, not actual data, and he says the working class whites think they work more than they actually do. In his home town, Middletown, Ohio, he says that 30% of the young men work fewer than 20 hours a week, and yet “find not a single person aware of his own laziness.”
His Mom’s marriage to Bob when he was a little boy ended up being a nightmare. Bob was never physically abusive to him but his Mom was abusive to Bob. They fought over money because even though they were making over 100,000 dollars a year, they wasted it on new cars, new trucks, swimming pools. The rules he learned about marriage were why talk when you can yell and scream, don’t hit unless the wife hits first, insult and hurt your partner with your words, leave with the kids and the dog if it gets too intense but don’t tell him where you’re going. It wasn’t just his Mom and Bob, but everywhere around him. It wasn’t until he experienced his Aunt Wee’s marriage to Dan that he learned there was another way of being. Aunt Wee thought Dan’s family was weird because they never yelled at each other.
When he was 11 years old, his mom tried to kill herself by crashing her van into a telephone pole. Things started to go really south after that. She “partied” all the time and there was a parade of men in her life. She would slap or pinch him and his sister Lindsay. One time, he ran out of the house without shoes and stayed with his Mamaw and Papaw for 2 days. Finally, he agreed to accept her apology because she said she would take him to the mall to buy football cards. On the way, she got angry and sped up the car to what felt like a hundred miles an hour. He jumped in the back seat and that infuriated her even more. She pulled over and stopped so she could beat him and he jumped out and ran for his life. He ran to a stranger – a fat lady in a pool – and let him call his Mamaw. But his Mom had followed him and was trying to drag him away. The stranger had called 911 and the cops came and took his Mom away in handcuffs. That was when he was 12 years old. She had to go before a judge and they told him to lie to the judge so the judge wouldn’t put her in jail. He did lie and said she never threatened him, but the agreement was he’d never have to live with her again – he would get to live with Mamaw and Papaw.
What he learned about God from his Mamaw was that God was always with him, but he needed to work hard, take care of his family, forgive others, and never despair because God had a plan. “God helps those who help themselves.” “I needed reassurance of some deeper justice, some cadence or rhythm that lurked beneath the heartache and chaos.”
Pg 93-97: His biological father fell out of his life almost immediately and allowed him to be adopted by Bob. This was a deep hurt for J.D. But they do form a relationship later on and J.D. starts visiting on weekends and even lived with him for a little while. This dad became a Christian when he married Cheryl and his Christian faith helped him become a better person and happier. However, although his Dad was a regular church-goer, most of the hillbillies in Appalachia and the Rust Belt were not regular church-goers. They would lie and say “Yes” to surveys that asked if they attend church regularly. But they actually attend church as much as people in ultra-liberal San Francisco. He got into his Dad’s church and discovered the bad side of that type of Christianity: battle lines over scientific theories like the Big Bang and Evolution, lashing out at so called persecution of Christians in America like the so-called war on Christmas and the gay lobby. He eventually grew to reject the Christian faith but at the time he loved his Dad and the church.
Page 144-145: He writes about a book by William Julius Wilson, The Truly Disadvantaged, that he read for the first time at age 16. J.D. identified completely with the people written about in this book, that wasn’t about hillbillies transplanted from Appalachia, but about inner city blacks. Another book, Charles Murray’s Losing Ground, also about black folks but could have been written about his folks, and “addressed the way our government encouraged social decay through the welfare state.” These books didn’t fully explain the problems he saw around him and in his Mom – abusive relationships, drug addiction, etc. “Our elegy is a sociological one, yes, but it is also about psychology and community and culture and faith.”
Page 146-147: On these two pages he describes the ugliness of this culture of poverty. Buying things on credit that you don’t really need-big houses, big TVs, the latest gadget. Declaring bankruptcy and leaving a house full of garbage behind. Getting pregnant and addicted in youth, just like your mom or dad. Yelling and screaming at each other, hitting and punching each other. Sometimes the neighbors call the cops. Saying sorry and then doing it all again a few days later. Not allowing children the peace and quiet to study. Never studying yourself. Needing a job but choosing not to work, or getting a job and then getting fired for stealing, being drunk, taking 35 minute potty breaks, etc. And then blaming Obama for everything wrong with their lives.
Page 163: He joined the Marines right after high school instead of going to college. He knew he wasn’t ready for college. He learned in boot camp that he had “learned helplessness” which is when you feel your choices have no effect on the outcomes in your life. The Marines taught him “learned willfulness.” It really was a game-changer in his life. The Marine Corps gave him the powerful realization that lack of effort does not equal inability. Once he put forth the effort, sometimes to the point of almost puking, and realized he could do it, he gained the confidence and agency to turn his life of poverty around. The one thing he wishes he could change in the white working class is their feeling that their choices don’t matter.
Page 194: He writes about modern conservatives, and he is one, making their constituents become detached from life and keeping their expectations low. The right sends the message that “it’s not your fault that you’re a loser, it’s the government’s fault.”
After college, he decided to go to law school. He applied to several and someone (I can’t remember who) advised him to go ahead and apply to an Ivy League school. He opted for Yale and lo and behold, not only was admitted, but was given enough financial aid to make it even more affordable than lesser law schools.
He fell in love with Usha, an Indian student with him at Yale. She showed him a different world – one in which you don’t run away or try to hurt your loved ones when they hurt you. He discovered that his childhood was full of ACEs, “adverse childhood experiences,” every single one of these things: being sworn at, insulted, or humiliated by parents; being pushed, grabbed, or having something thrown at you; feeling that your family didn’t support each other; having parents who were separated or divorced; living with an alcoholic or a drug user; living with someone who was depressed or attempted suicide; watching a loved one be physically abused. ACEs happen everywhere but are more common in the geographic area in which he grew up. Children who grow up with ACEs suffer from anxiety, depression, heart disease, obesity, and some cancers. The stress changes their brain chemistry – constant triggering of the flight or fight syndrome, constant stress causes them to be “hard-wired for conflict.”
It’s been almost impossible for him to “unlearn” the destructive habits he learned – disagreements were war, using words as weapons. He realizes he couldn’t do it without Usha, who is skilled at defusing him. If he was married to someone like him, there would be no way to avoid the ugliness he grew up with. He realizes that the few successful marriages he sees (Aunt Wee, Lindsay, his cousin Gail) all married people from outside of their culture. He wonders how much of the bad is passed down from parents or is their own fault. His Uncle Jimmy remembers seeing Papaw weeping and saying “I’ve failed her; I’ve failed her; I’ve failed my baby girl.” Papaw and Mamaw were violent and Papaw was a drunk even though he worked and supported the family. He changed in his adult life and just stopped drinking, but a lot of damage was done.
He talks about how much he loved his Mom when he was in kindergarten and early childhood. Then he grew to hate her and wished she would die to rid himself and his sister, Lindsay, of her endless trauma and hurt. When he was almost done with law school, his sister Lindsay called to tell him their Mom was now addicted to heroin. This caused him to fear.
Page 239 he talks about the experiences that allowed him to rise above. They involve people who were there for him – his grandparents, his sister Lindsay, his Mom only because she gave him a love of learning early on, his Aunt Wee and her happy marriage to Dan.
Page 242 he writes about the disparity in opportunity throughout the country and the most hopeless are the South, the Rust Belt, and Appalachia. There are a lot of single moms and poverty is everywhere. You don’t see any examples of a different way of life, so you just continue in it. (Ignorance and Isolation is mentioned in The Trail of the Lonesome Pine.) And rather than honor the extended family system of the poor, like let him live with his grandparents (or an uncle/Aunt, etc.) they would farm kids out to foster families which separates the child from everything they know and love. He lied to the courts, said his mom was just fine, and that way he got to live with his grandparents unofficially, because they wouldn’t have been licensed caretakers otherwise.
Page 255, he writes about a young man named Brian who he takes out to lunch (at a fast food place because those are the only places). He’s 15 years old and was raised in Appalachian Kentucky. His Mom was a drug addict and he had a complicated relationship with his dad. His Mom died recently, and even though he hadn’t lived with her in a few years, it still hurts, a lot. How do you give this child hope for a better life? “Brian’s mom’s death was another shitty card in an already abysmal hand, but there are many cards left to deal: whether his community empowers him with a sense that he can control his own destiny or encourages him to take refuge in resentment at forces beyond his control; whether he can access a church that teaches him lessons of Christian love, family, and purpose; whether those people who do step up to positively influence Brian find emotional and spiritual support from their neighbors.” He talks about his Mamaw who stopped buying them bicycles because the neighbors kept stealing them and then she stopped answering her door because the neighbor lady was constantly asking for money, which she used to buy drugs. How his cousin sold the house that had been in the family for over a century because he knew the drug addicts would ransack it.
In the Afterword on page 261, he talks about politics. He is a conservative and he sees that the welfare programs of the 1960s did prevent a lot of suffering, but that we need to enable the poor to advance and move up, rather than create a “permanent American underclass, one where family dysfunction, childhood trauma, cultural segregation, and hopelessness coexist with some basic measure of subsistence. Or we can do something considerably more difficult: reject the notion of a permanent American underclass.”
“Yet to return to the issue that motivated me to write this book, doing better requires that we acknowledge the role of culture. As the liberal senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan argued, “The central conservative truth is that it is culture, not politics, that determines the success of a society.” I agree, and my view that there will never be a purely government-based solution to the problems I write about has remained largely unchanged since HIllbilly Elegy came out. That said, I’m hardly a policy skeptic, and I think there is much more our governments could do to address these problems.”