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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I grew up a professional, liberal, upper middle class family in a suburb of a large city. My husband comes from a blue collar family in Kentucky. He's the first in his family to get a PhD (which is where we met), and the only one who doesn't currently live in the Kentucky/Tennessee area.  There was definitely a bit of culture shock the first few times I visited my in laws.  DH had some culture shock as well, as he has moved to a different socioeconomic class than the rest of his family.  A similar situation happened to the scene where JD Vance describes going to a law firm recruiting dinner and being utterly overwhelmed by the number of forks present and then calling up his girlfriend for advice happened to my DH when we first started dating.  We are older millennials. So in a sense, as a couple we are kind of similar to Vance and his wife in terms of our backgrounds, and like them we now live in the SF bay area.

DH grew up in the western part of Kentucky, which is has an economy that is based more on agriculture and manufacturing and is not dependent on coal mining. His mom's side of the family (and perhaps his dad side as well, I'm not sure) had a similar exodus from Appalachia described in the Hillbilly Elegy; they were originally from the hills in Tennessee and left for economic reasons.  There were a lot of elements of that book that felt very familiar to me, especially when describing the "hillbilly" culture (the fierce loyalty, hot tempers, close knit communities, etc.)--it describes his mom and some of his uncles to a T.  DH's family life was much more stable and less chaotic  than Vance's, with no drug addicts or domestic violence, but he still has expressed a lot of similar feelings about a lack of cultural capital, awareness of educational opportunities, etc.  All of this was a world that was totally foreign to me until I met my DH.

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.[/quote]

20:44 again and this sounds so similar to how my spouse and I related to one another initially. I'm also from western KY. What part is your husband from (if you don't want to get too specific, is it north, closer to Indiana or south, closer to TN)?[/quote]

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