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[quote=Anonymous][quote=jsteele]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.

[/quote]

I haven't read the book, but I'd be interested in talking about it based on the interview with JD Vance that I did read. http://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/trump-us-politics-poor-whites/

Just a cursory guess, but I think the core of the problem is a culture that's been socially and politically groomed over generations to not complain or ask for anything in return for providing low-cost labor in very grueling and dangerous occupations.  Steel and coal industries leave their labor force with lifelong health problems in the best of conditions and high risk of terrifying death in the best.  How do you keep people coming back to work when the empirically bad effects are all around them?

Well, pride helps. Pride that you're not dependent (though you are); pride that you're not minority and/or immigrant; pride in roots and tradition; pride in a loosely defined freedom and independence to live life by your own terms.  Pride in being exactly who you are, where you are, because there's little chance those things can be changed.

Again, just making a quick guess and it's based on Vance's first answer in that interview.  [/quote]

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