Hillbilly Elegy

[Anonymous]

Wow. You're right about the getting out and returning. And it's hard to see that happening much.

Similar to: You hear that story, rarely, about say, a college basketball star who gets a really good education, then goes back and gets involved in his or her city community.

Anecdotally, I have NEVER heard of someone getting out of KY or wherever, getting a masters or Ph.D., then going back to live and work in that same community. Not even a human interest story on the evening news.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Wow. You're right about the getting out and returning. And it's hard to see that happening much.

Similar to: You hear that story, rarely, about say, a college basketball star who gets a really good education, then goes back and gets involved in his or her city community.

Anecdotally, I have NEVER heard of someone getting out of KY or wherever, getting a masters or Ph.D., then going back to live and work in that same community. Not even a human interest story on the evening news.

There is a lot of unglamorous work people do who return to those regions with higher education. For example, faculty at regional state universities have PhDs, faculty at rural community colleges have PhDs and masters degrees, doctors at rural hospitals have medical degrees, and so on.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Wow. You're right about the getting out and returning. And it's hard to see that happening much.

Similar to: You hear that story, rarely, about say, a college basketball star who gets a really good education, then goes back and gets involved in his or her city community.

Anecdotally, I have NEVER heard of someone getting out of KY or wherever, getting a masters or Ph.D., then going back to live and work in that same community. Not even a human interest story on the evening news.

I am not from one of those communities, but am from a poor working class area in Virgina. I earned my Master's and there are very few jobs for me to go back to. While working in a college in another state, I met a student from my hometown; her first comment was "I've never met anyone who was able to get out of ???? before." I told her the trick was to leave and never move back. There was an article a few years back about a young black man who was living homeless on the streets in DC while going to college; he was from my hometown and he told the Post if he went back, he would never finish college and get drawn back into the gangs--he would rather live on the street in DC until he graduated.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Wow. You're right about the getting out and returning. And it's hard to see that happening much.

Similar to: You hear that story, rarely, about say, a college basketball star who gets a really good education, then goes back and gets involved in his or her city community.

Anecdotally, I have NEVER heard of someone getting out of KY or wherever, getting a masters or Ph.D., then going back to live and work in that same community. Not even a human interest story on the evening news.

There is a lot of unglamorous work people do who return to those regions with higher education. For example, faculty at regional state universities have PhDs, faculty at rural community colleges have PhDs and masters degrees, doctors at rural hospitals have medical degrees, and so on.

Yes they do, but there is no guarantee a job will be available in you home area when you are trained and ready to go back. A lot of people just end up in a different impoverished area rather than the one they are from. Happened to both my PhD holding DH and I.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
I thought the memoir was compelling at a narrative level, but I have met a number of people who move from the working class to the professional class who have expressed a similar feelings of alienation and and I wonder why it is that Vance in particular was given this platform between the memoir and becoming a talking head to represent the white working class in talk shows and such. I also wonder about his conservatism and what it's like to be a hardcore republican in the bay area. My DH who has a similar cultural background and is close in age to Vance has completely different politics, and a completely different perspective on what kinds of policies would be beneficial to white, rural working class areas. It's interesting to me that two people with such similar backgrounds and trajectories could arrive at such different perspectives on the world.

I have gone from being a working class conservative from a poor area to being an educated liberal living in the DC area. To do so has meant I have lost coomon ground with most of my family. I will never be accepted again, so can understand how Vance would be an acceptable cross over. He is successful and educated, yet conservative--which is sadly the only acceptable way to be. It was not like that back in the 60s and 70s, but is the case now. I have a feeling I may agree more with your DH. Sadly, there are many of us who become lost without a place to ever again call home...once you leave physically or mentally, "you can never go home again."

[Anonymous]

Author of "Hillbilly Elegy" is on with Brian Williams right now.

[Anonymous]

I read this book and have no problems with it but didn't find it all that great.

A much older and much superior book that attacks similar subject matter, but with no political or "talking head" agenda is Chris Offutt's The Same River Twice.

This is not a popular opinion, but I found Coates's book to be among his weakest work and think it was dashed off with the knowledge that it would be a bestseller. Wish he'd stuck to the Civil War book he had planned instead.

[Anonymous]

Deeply disappointed in this book. Little or no analysis and this book was sooooo conservative -- he seemed to believe people want to be poor.

[Anonymous]

I'm reading it now and irritated he's getting compared to Ta-Nehesi Coates. HARDLY. It's a perfectly serviceable memoir about his personal f-ed up family and the book itself doesn't even attempt to try and translate the examples in his family to a macro scale. It's basically "My mamaw cursed a lot and my mom was messed up." Okay?

[Anonymous]

The book just happened to fall at the right time, which is how it got so much hype and press.

[Anonymous]

I think Vance is a con artist. Grandparents with a $100K HHI and a mom who graduated top of her high school class, became a nurse, step dad who made at least $75K as truck driver isn't "working poor." And the town he grew up in in Ohio is STILL a pretty pleasant place. I think he's a smart nerd from Ohio that stole all the content for this book from white trash he saw in Kentucky.

Joined the military to pay for college? No. I think he's a clever nerd that wanted bonafides so he could get into an elite law school, write a book, run for office. The fact that Tiger Mom herself was his mentor at Yale tells you everything.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I"m from a small town in middle America that is awfully hillbilly. (though there are no hills around - I'd call them more country). I've had this on my to read list and have seen the guy on TV talking about the book and read a few reviews. What what I've read, it seems like your impression - it's an interesting story of one family, but doesn't necessarily translate well - is the general impression.

So not sure how much I will push to read it - maybe if it pops up at the library. The one thing I will say is that if you're not related or otherwise familiar with white people like this, you don't really get it. My personal experience living in DC surrounded by white liberal educated folks is that there is a huge disconnect from white, lower class, more poorly educated folks.

Perhaps you think there's s disconnect , but there's something you need to understand about white liberals —they keep and settle scores . For decades white liberals were demonized in this country by the very people cited in that book and their handlers of the Republican Party . Godless, immoral , welfare distributors , anti American , and so on and so forth.
Today the chickens have come home to roost, does it cross those people minds that the social programs that they virulently opposed because it was going to benefit those 'other people ' or because government is bad might have gone a long way in lessening their burden? Suffering? Pain? Furthermore , unlike their 'God fearing' white conservatives counterparts , liberals have known and cknowledged that those 'other people' have a unique history in this country and faced atrocities that even the poorest of the poor whites hasn't and still doesn't face till this day and as such public policy need to be cognizant of these historical factors and do whatever it takes so members of that community get a fair and legitimate shot at real EMANCIPATION

Long story short, white liberals today have no use for the kind of whites described in that book and rightfully so.

NP and not white but all this ^^^^^^^^^ is why Trump is winning.

PP. ok lol.

Are you dense? You can't LOL this away, you can't pretend PP doesn't have a point. Captain Cheeto is about to take the stage in 2 weeks, its happening, distinctly NOT lol

[Anonymous]

I read it over the summer. I'm from Cincinnati and JD Vance grew up right outside of Cincinnati. His timing just happened to be perfect so he's been on CNN, MSNBC, etc. multiple times.

I do give him credit for making it from "hillbilly" to Yale Law Grad and in a weird confluence of people, his mentor was "Tiger Mom" at Yale Law. She encouraged him to write the book

[Anonymous]

There were some nuggets in there I wanted him to expand on further. Like the people on welfare complaining about other people on welfare. I wanted him to drill down into that and talk about why. Or how they all talk about personal responsibility but don't walk the walk...WHY?

All in all I agree with Jeff- ok book. Not up to the hype.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I read it over the summer. I'm from Cincinnati and JD Vance grew up right outside of Cincinnati. His timing just happened to be perfect so he's been on CNN, MSNBC, etc. multiple times.

I do give him credit for making it from "hillbilly" to Yale Law Grad and in a weird confluence of people, his mentor was "Tiger Mom" at Yale Law. She encouraged him to write the book

If you actually read the book he wasn't a hillbilly, not even close. His mom was the salutatorian of her class in a prosperous middle class town. I don't know any trailer trash whose moms had 4.0s in high school. I don't know any trailer trash whose grandpa casually came home in new Buicks and Cadillacs. The whole angle for claiming he's white trash is degenerate family back in Kentucky, oh, and a mom who was attractive enough to have a bunch of guys interested in her.