The Allegheny Mountains: Hoye-Crest to Blackwater Falls

Book Review

Hillbilly Elegy by J.D. Vance
Harper Collins, 2016 
264 pages
$27.95

A New York Times best-seller, Vance’s book, written in advance of the 2016 election, is a memoir of his own experiences growing up as a “hillbilly” in Ohio. In many ways essential reading for our time, it is a world I recognize, though thankfully was not a part of. Vance’s recollection of family dysfunction, substance abuse, and economic struggle on his course to Yale Law is ultimately an uplifting story and a much needed window into the working classes.

At the same time, it is not without fault. As Vance concedes early, most of his life was spent between Cincinnati and Dayton, in Middletown, Ohio. His family was one of the millions that left for industrial jobs in factories; the “hillbilly” connection is through his parents and grandparents, who came to Ohio from Jackson County, Kentucky after World War II. His connection to Jackson is a place of the family homestead, of long summer and holiday stays. It is not having actually grown up there.

And perhaps it is for this reason that Vance uses “hillbilly” and “working class” almost interchangeably, conceding the characteristics that his Scots-Irish hillbillies have in common with other working class groups, while at times maintaining a tenuous distinction . I have been reading this book alongside an older book, Limbo, by Alfred Lubrano, who went to Columbia after growing up in an Italian-American family in Queens. There are differences, to be sure: Lubrano does not document the kinds of personal family dysfunction that Vance does. But there is community violence- in both- and many of the other struggles associated with the working class, most notably how rising generations adjust to the codes and expectations of the middle and upper classes.

At the same time, in the moving descriptions of family reunions and funerals (especially the deaths of his grandparents and the procession to the family cemetery), Vance most closely touches my own memories of life in Appalachia proper. The abusive language and dysfunctional relationships mirror what I remember from acquaintances in junior high and high school-the kind of students that I was typically separated out from thanks to “tracking” of coursework. He is ultimately convincing as a hillbilly, but more convincing as a “straddler” of Lubrano’s book from a decade ago, as he recounts the same social awkwardness and learning curve as a hillbilly at Yale that Lubrano experienced as an Italian American at Columbia.

Vance, who self-identifies as a conservative, is to be credited with honest critique of conservatives and conservatism, as well as the Appalachian region. He points out early on that church attendance in the south is no better on average than San Francisco, but the cultural perception of church attendance (both in and out of those regions) is very different. He recognizes the role that luck has had in his own success, not discrediting his hard work, but balancing it with having been in the right place at the right time. While dismissive of large scale solutions to the problems of Appalachian families, he does believe there are ways to “tip the scale” to help kids like him succeed.

In the final chapter of the book, Vance recounts a meeting with a “15 year-old J.D.,” a younger version of himself. The young man, who unlike Vance had spent his entire life in eastern Kentucky, faced the same struggles with family addiction and abuse that he had, but without the same social support that Vance received from grandparents and extended family. Ultimately, Vance lays responsibility for helping young men like this at the feet of “hillbillies” themselves, not the government or outsiders who don’t understand. In this last chapter there is a mix of admirable American “bootstraps” thinking mixed with a bit of clannishness that is disconcerting. Can “hillbillies” really save themselves? Is rejecting the coastal “elites” really an answer to saving the people of Appalachia? Can churches and communities-on their own- begin to look outwardly and compassionately at their neighbors be built to support the broken families in their midst?

On this last point, I am skeptical. I know the beast a little too well, and perhaps this is why Vance is dismissive of “big-government” solutions. While Vance may or may not be correct in calling the Scots-Irish descendants of Appalachia the “toughest goddamned people on this Earth,” it is precisely that mentality that gets us into trouble. The region needs help, and moreover, it has begged for it, time and again, in our election cycles. The question is how to wisely offer help to a region that stubbornly clings to a land and social structure long in crisis.

I was never a hillbilly; my father’s education, as well as the bookish German American heritage passed from my mom’s beloved grandfather (whose cultural habits are a distinct minority in Appalachia) spared me from that. Hillbilly Elegy is not so much a revelation for me, as a concentrated view of the things I saw in passing, heard echos of in the conversations of adults, and knew that I should be thankful to have avoided. For us to understand 21st century America, though, it is an important, if at times painful, journey into the dark valleys of the Appalachian soul.

© Randall Stewart, 2017