Hillbilly Elegy

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote: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.

I agree with this summary. I actually thought it provided some interesting insight and food for thought primarily because of all the built-in contradictions in the culture he describes. Pride in the violent values but then a lengthy description of the effects of adverse childhood experiences. He points out that religion brought his father around and helps a lot of people, but doesn't like the way it restricts his freedom to enjoy music he likes. His mother - was her state her own fault or her culture's? He needs his community and also distrusts his community.

Some of the contradictory thinking I chalk up to his age - and at least he acknowledges it. But it also seems to be at the heart of conservative values. Which is, I guess, why they don't make any sense to an outsider.

[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.

Anecdotally, Dolly Parton is an excellent example. Maybe the only one, but she made it big and is helping her hometown, home state, and the country. She's admirable.

[Anonymous]

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.

Utter nonsense. There's a reason that liberals support policies that would actually benefit rural white Americans just as they would benefit urban brown Americans. The Right in this country is about reserving spoils to the white rural areas and to the wealthy. The Left is about actually providing a framework and set of supports where everyone can succeed: rural and urban. Of course, this is one of the reasons that the white rural voter is so antagonistic to the liberal agenda--they have absolutely no problem with social welfare programs so long as nothing goes towards blacks and browns.

[Anonymous]

I am from a poor white trash family in the Midwest. I was looking forward to reading this book this month. Sorry to hear it is just so-so.

What boggles my mind (the only person in my family who "got out" with scholarships and went to college, and the only one not on some sort of government aid... I kid you not) is how no one in my extended family wants to improve their lot in life. I would love some discussion and insights on this. My husband thinks I was switched in the hospital (his explanation of how I emerged)! Lol.

[Anonymous]

People thought it was so weird I was in the military. Yeah, probably not seeing how there's strong ROTC participation on every Ivy League campus. JD is another flim-flam writer.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I am from a poor white trash family in the Midwest. I was looking forward to reading this book this month. Sorry to hear it is just so-so.

What boggles my mind (the only person in my family who "got out" with scholarships and went to college, and the only one not on some sort of government aid... I kid you not) is how no one in my extended family wants to improve their lot in life. I would love some discussion and insights on this. My husband thinks I was switched in the hospital (his explanation of how I emerged)! Lol.

I didn't consider it just so-so and think you should go ahead and read it.

The insight is that the culture is eroding from the inside out. I think the disappointment is in the author's ambivalence. Is he defending this culture or calling it out? I think it's both.

And then you're left with the same hard question he seems to be facing: what can be done about it? His conservative values seem to say that government can't and won't fix it.

[Anonymous]

I am 10:56 poster. Thanks for the prompt to read it after all. I am a liberal, but happen to see the poor whites I know as using the government aid as their support, so I am not sure if the government is helping or hurting by having a host of programs that provide money, food and rent help every month. As long as they don't want any more in life, my family seems to be fine not applying themselves, not yearning to move forward, and watching TV all day long, living from aid check to aid check.

Oh, and this is a good time to add that those who voted, voted for Trump.

[Anonymous]

I agree with many of the PPs that it was a compelling personal story, but to the extent it was intended to be some kind of commentary on policy or politics, I didn't get that. There are so many missing dots between the culture he describes and any kind of conclusion about what should be done about it, or why the white working poor voted for Trump (to the extent that is the point).

I don't necessarily blame Vance, he just wrote his memoir, but the problem is the book is being inaccurately framed as "must read to understand the election."

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I am 10:56 poster. Thanks for the prompt to read it after all. I am a liberal, but happen to see the poor whites I know as using the government aid as their support, so I am not sure if the government is helping or hurting by having a host of programs that provide money, food and rent help every month. As long as they don't want any more in life, my family seems to be fine not applying themselves, not yearning to move forward, and watching TV all day long, living from aid check to aid check.

Oh, and this is a good time to add that those who voted, voted for Trump.

I'm the PP who responded and think this is quandry that the book presents. You're left with a feeling that there's nothing anyone can do to help people who won't help themselves.

I'm also a liberal and think the book underscores a misunderstanding about conservative vs. liberal values. He seems to be saying that government programs do more harm than good because they reinforce lazy reliance on the state. My own feeling is that government has a responsibility to ensure the basics are provided, but it's an individual's responsibility to use every measure at their disposal to take care of themselves and their families.

i don't know what will stop the cycle of dysfunction he describes, though.

[Anonymous]

Just finished the book and thought it was good. But I cannot figure our why someone so smart, from the background is a conservative.
Here's a good review of the book: http://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-com...of-poor-white-people

and an interesting interview with Vance (hod to hold my nose to click on this site but it's worth the read) http://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher...olitics-poor-whites/

One thing that opened my eyes is that the plight of the poor whites is almost identical to poor blacks, but few see it that way. We say that poor blacks living in the inner cities don't improve their station because of their culture while for poor whites we blame it on the economy. Vance makes the point, for the Hillbillies at least, that it's a combination of the two and you are never going to get out of poverty until you change your mindset and go after opportunities even if they aren't right in front of you.

[Anonymous]

I agree with some of what's been said here - I think it's a good memoir but doesn't attempt to answer the policy questions surrounding these issues. I don't think it aims to do that, however. Vance had amazing timing in coming out with this book just as the Trump phenomenon was happening.

I disagree, however, that there isn't anything to be learned from this book in the context of the election. Personally, reading this book shed a lot of light as to why Trump's comments about women, the disabled, minorities, etc simply did not doom his electoral chances. That was small potatoes compared to what a big swath of the country hears daily. I also think this book illustrates why people from these poor parts of the country vote for Republicans who vow to cut off government assistance to the poor. They think the only people getting help are other people -- non-white people from the cities and their undeserving (lazy) neighbors.

I also thought it was enlightening to hear him talk about his neighbors who really were unwilling to work hard and hold down a job (the guy with the pregnant girlfriend, for example). It is so frustrating to think that these are the same people who hate immigrants who are working their tails off in this country -- they seem to think that by being born in America, they deserve things simply by birthright.

And finally, the opiod abuse situation in these communities is just out of control, though that's certainly been written about more extensively than in this book.

Bottom line, no, this book doesn't provide answers -- I think Vance himself would say the answers are very complex and to a large degree, have to come from the community itself rather than from public policy.

[Anonymous]

jsteele wrote:Has anyone read "Hillbilly Elegy" and interested in talking about it? I just finished the book and have very mixed feelings. It was an interesting memoir, but I don't feel like it lived up to its billing. I don't think that it shed a lot of light on the greater community of "hillbillies". While it was good at highlighting problems, I would have liked to have seen more analysis of the causes of those problems and ideas for solutions.

I'd be interested to hear thoughts about this book from those who are well-read in similar literature about the black community, such as Ta-Nehisi Coates' books. I think there could be some interesting similarities.

I read the book and liked it quite a lot. Much better than Strangers in our land (which has a very interesting story line but is way too repetitive).

Now, in a sense it is the precise opposite of Ta-Nehisi books. Hillbilly is very open and critical of his own community and his own family and his own life and his own decisions. Ta-Nehisi prefers to blame the universe for those.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote: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.

I don't think you read the book. His mom was addicted his entire childhood and did not mother him. His entire family was deeply dysfunctional and traumatized. You can decide he was lying, I suppose, but if you accept that it is a faithful attempt and autobiography you have to accept that his family was very broken.

I am reading Dream Land now, about the rise of opiate addiction in the US and the role of a small town drug-producing town in Mexico and the pain clinic industry - its a good journalistic companion piece to Hillbilly Elegy, I think.

[Anonymous]

Just finished the book and thought it was good. But I cannot figure our why someone so smart, from the background is a conservative.

I can't figure it out either, but it must have something to do with his early mentors. It's hard to ignore how much he was helped along the way by people in positions of power. If you've got no one with power and know-how in your sphere, or at least someone willing to give you another shot after you've made mistakes, you've got no shot. If he'd been black, his mother and most of the men in his life would have been locked up or killed.

I think the "learned helplessness" he talks about is at the root of his conservatism, but the conservatism ignores a lot of the help he needed to turn his life around.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: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.

I don't think you read the book. His mom was addicted his entire childhood and did not mother him. His entire family was deeply dysfunctional and traumatized. You can decide he was lying, I suppose, but if you accept that it is a faithful attempt and autobiography you have to accept that his family was very broken.

I am reading Dream Land now, about the rise of opiate addiction in the US and the role of a small town drug-producing town in Mexico and the pain clinic industry - its a good journalistic companion piece to Hillbilly Elegy, I think.

I read the book and yes, I think he obviously embellished/exaggerated a lot of it.