Click on a thumbnail to go to Google Books.
Loading... Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis (edition 2018)by J. D. Vance (Author)
Work InformationHillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis by J. D. Vance
Books Read in 2017 (161) Books Read in 2019 (169) » 24 more Favorite Memoirs (6) Top Five Books of 2018 (392) Top Five Books of 2019 (131) Top Five Books of 2016 (381) Books Set in Ohio (10) GAL Book Club (4) Books Read in 2018 (930) Family Drama (34) Read the book and saw the movie (1,029) Lit Lattes Ep 003 (15) Books Tagged Abuse (18) True Color (1) To Read (177) Loading...
Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. No current Talk conversations about this book. Wow. I found this book so moving. J.D. Vance intimately details the obstacles faced by both himself and his fellow hillbillies (his words) when attempting to claw their way out of poverty and hopelessness. In doing so, he paints a loving and searingly honest portrait of a culture steeped in values of honour and family ties, yet stymied by a kind of learned helplessness following the successive economic downturns of the last three decades. Vance is adamant that while external circumstances (and he chronicles these in detail) stack the deck against America's working-class whites, individual choices play a significant role in determining anyone's future. And he continually reinforces the positive impact a few strong and positive people can have on a kid's life. I am left full of admiration for Vance and full of love for his extended Appalachian clan, warts and all. A quick and interesting insight into life growing up in the Rust Belt. Some of the stories were compelling insights into the types of families and lives that some of my friends since moving to Chicago 9 years ago have had (often that were completely absent when I lived in New Jersey), and helped contextualize for me some aspects of middle American culture that seem contradictory to an outsider. Overall, it wasn't a life-altering book, but worth the time it took to read for sure, despite the author's tendency to ramble a bit and repeat himself at times.
Belongs to Publisher SeriesUllstein (37763) Is contained inIs replied to inHas as a studyAwardsDistinctionsNotable Lists
Vance, a former marine and Yale Law School graduate, provides an account of growing up in a poor Rust Belt town that offers a broader, probing look at the struggles of America's white working class. The decline of this group, a demographic of our country that has been slowly disintegrating over forty years, has been reported on with growing frequency and alarm. J. D. Vance tells the true story of what a social, regional, and class decline feels like when you were born with it hung around your neck. The Vance family story begins hopefully in postwar America. J. D.'s grandparents were "dirt poor and in love," and moved north from Kentucky's Appalachia region to Ohio in the hopes of escaping the dreadful poverty around them. They raised a middle-class family, and eventually their grandchild (the author) would graduate from Yale Law School, a conventional marker of their success in achieving generational upward mobility. But as the family saga of Hillbilly Elegy plays out, we learn that this is only the short, superficial version. Vance's grandparents, aunt, uncle, sister, and, most of all, his mother, struggled profoundly with the demands of their new middle-class life, and were never able to fully escape the legacy of abuse, alcoholism, poverty, and trauma so characteristic of their part of America. No library descriptions found. |
Current DiscussionsNonePopular covers
Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)305.5Social sciences Social Sciences; Sociology and anthropology Groups of people ClassLC ClassificationRatingAverage:
Is this you?Become a LibraryThing Author. |
It's very instructive to hear, for once, the voice of hillbillies or any other neglected groups speaking for themselves, as subject of action rather than object of policy. Or worse, horror movie pitchfork crowds with fiddles... ( )