Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture

“My people were extreme, but extreme in the service of something—defending a sister’s honor or ensuring that a criminal paid for his crimes. The Blanton men, like the tomboy Blanton sister whom I called Mamaw, were enforcers of hillbilly justice, and, to me, that was the very best kind.”

Vance shows that hillbilly law and justice trump all else, both for himself and his family, and his community. Geographically isolated, poor, and family-centric, Appalachians possess a code of honor that defines who they are, much more than any external, societal forces. A central tenet of this code is defending family members from all outsiders.

“It was not simply that the Appalachian migrants, as rural strangers ‘out of place’ in the city, were upsetting to Midwestern, urban whites. Rather, these migrants disrupted a broad set of assumptions held by northern whites about how white people appeared, spoke, behaved […] the disturbing aspect of hillbillies was their racialness. Ostensibly, they were of the same racial order (whites) as those who dominated economic, political, and social power in local and national arenas. But hillbillies shared many regional characteristics with the southern blacks arriving in Detroit.”

Vance takes this quote from the book Appalachian Odyssey: Historical Perspectives on the Great Migration, a 2000 text about the mass out-migrations of Appalachians to other parts of America. Vance spends a portion of the memoir illustrating how it was difficult for his grandparents, Mamaw and Papaw, early on in Ohio due to cultural differences between white communities in Appalachia and the Midwest. At various points in his memoir, Vance likens these migrations and cultural differences to those of African Americans.

“Because they were hill people, they had to keep their two lives separate. No outsiders could know about the familial strife—with outsiders defined very broadly.”

Nearly every home Vance spends time in as a youth is a violent one: his mother was in a series of abusive relationships (where she, on some occasions, was the sole abuser), and Mamaw and Papaw’s relationship is hyper-violent, with Papaw giving Mamaw black eyes, and at one point, Mamaw dousing Papaw in gasoline and setting him on fire. Yet because Vance’s family identified as Appalachian, and, in Ohio, perceived themselves as “other,” it was rare for instances of domestic abuse to end with an outside authority, such as the police, arriving at the scene. This is another part of the hillbilly code: only a family should know of a family’s problems, and it is up to the family to solve those problems, as well.

“You can walk through a town where 30 percent of the young men work fewer than twenty hours a week and find not a single person aware of his own laziness.”

This quote typifies two important aspects of Vance’s memoir: urban decay, and white, working-class America’s inability to deal with the fallout thereof. While Vance consistently concedes that places like Middletown, Ohio have been permanently, negatively altered in both the quantity and quality of employment opportunities by factors beyond citizens’ control, he also points out that white, working-class America—or at the very least the Scots-Irish, hillbilly subset of which he is part—too often comes up with excuses for not working at all, thereby disallowing upward mobility and escaping their income-segregated communities.

“Those were fighting words, whether you wanted them to be or not. To shirk from avenging a string of insults was to lose your honor, your dignity, or even your friends. It was to go home and be afraid to tell your family that you had disgraced them.”

In his youth, Vance frequently gets into physical fights with people who have in some way offended or hurt members of his family: a boyfriend of his sister’s, and, later, a stepbrother who insults Vance’s mom. In these situations, and because of the hillbilly code of honor that Vance refers to often throughout the memoir, Vance never fears getting in trouble with authority figures (teachers, police) for these altercations; rather, he fears retribution from his family for not getting involved them.

“When I asked Mamaw if God loved us, I asked her to reassure me that this religion of ours could still make sense of the world we lived in. I needed reassurance of some deeper justice, some cadence or rhythm that lurked beneath the heartache or chaos.”

The Christian faith is a large part of Vance’s search for identity while he is a youth. While many of her actions may seem contradictory to Christian tenets, Mamaw is an adamant believer. Further, Vance’s biological father, Don Bowman, is a Pentecostal Christian, and the peace Vance finds at his father’s house is in large part due to his father’s religion—one that seems to remain a large part of Vance’s own life, as an adult.

“Lindsay was a Lewis (her dad’s last name), Mom took the last name of whichever husband she was married to, Mamaw and Papaw were Vance’s, and all of Mamaw’s brothers were Blantons.”

When Vance is six and given up for adoption by his biological father, his last and middle names are changed. Ultimately, he takes the name of his grandmother and grandfather—Vance. This large collection of last names among his family is symbolic of the non-nuclear family of which he is part, in addition to the lack of stability Vance cannot help but feel as he is shuttled between homes.

“I believe the problem started with a legitimate prescription, but soon enough, Mom was stealing from her patients and getting so high that turning an emergency room into a skating rink seemed like a good idea. Papaw’s death turned a semi-functioning addict into a woman unable to follow the basic norms of adult behavior.”

This quote highlights a turning moment in Vance’s life. His Papaw’s death and his mother’s subsequent drug abuse later result in Vance choosing to distance himself from his unstable mother. This recognition marks his internal growth toward independence from a toxic cycle.

“Living with Mom and Matt was like having a front-row seat to the end of the world. The fighting was relatively normal by my standards (and Mom’s), but I’m sure poor Matt kept asking himself how and when he’d hopped the express train to crazy town. It was just the three of us in that house, and it was clear to all that it wouldn’t work out. It was only a matter of time. Matt was a nice guy, and as Lindsay and I joked, nice guys never survived their encounters with our family.”

By the conclusion of Vance’s junior high years, Vance and his sister possess something akin to a postmodern awareness of how things will go for every relationship their mother, Bev, is in: poorly. Additionally, Bev’s relationship with Matt—described as very nice by Vance, and also from non-hillbilly stock—illustrates the differences in domestic life between Appalachians and their Midwestern, Anglo counterparts.

“There were three rules in her house: Get good grades, get a job, and ‘get off your ass and help me.’ There was no set chore list; I just had to help her with whatever she was doing. And she never told me what to do—she just yelled at me if she did anything and I wasn’t helping.”

Vance’s grandmother, Mamaw, can be considered the most important parental figure in Vance’s youth—without her, according to Vance, there is no way he would have become the successful person he ultimately becomes. At the same time, Mamaw remains part-terrifying hillbilly: She abuses her husband, has the mouth of a sailor, and is violently protective of her family.

“As millions migrated north to factory jobs, the communities that sprouted up around those factories were vibrant but fragile: When the factories shut their doors, the people left behind were trapped in towns and cities that could no longer support such large populations with high-quality work.”

Vance grows up (chiefly) in Middletown, Ohio, in the 1980s and 1990s, at a time when manufacturing jobs were going overseas, and competition from abroad—especially in regards to automobile manufacturing—forever altered America’s working-class landscape. Middletown is an example of a one-company town: Armco Steel, Middletown’s chief employer (and where Vance’s grandfather worked for nearly his entire adult life), merges with Kawasaki in the late 1980s, and subsequently hemorrhages jobs. The result is widespread decay: erosion of parks and other civic spaces, increased property theft, and increased drug use. There is little collective hope among Middletonians, by the time Vance is an adult.

“The trials of my youth instilled a debilitating self-doubt. Instead of congratulating myself on having overcome obstacles, I worried that I’d be overcome by the next ones. Marine Corps boot camp, with its barrage of challenges big and small, began to teach me I had underestimated myself.”

Vance grew up in broken homes; while there was most often some form of a father figure, there was never a consistent one. He regularly witnessed physical, verbal, and emotional abuse, and sometimes endured it himself. Often, without positive reinforcement from a parental figure, Vance would grow withdrawn and sullen, leaving him unsure of himself as a young adult. He identifies the Marines as providing the structure and self-belief he so badly needed.

“After so many years of fearing my own future, of worrying that I’d end up like many of my neighbors or family—addicted to drugs or alcohol, in prison, or with kids I couldn’t or wouldn’t take care of—I felt an incredible momentum. I knew the statistics […] I wasn’t supposed to make it, but I was doing just fine on my own.”

Vance is recounting his time at Ohio State University, one which saw him work three jobs while earning his degree in a mere two years. In taking on this much, Vance winds up in the hospital, with both mono and strep. Certainly, Vance is doing well, but he remains so plagued by the fear of failing that he also pushes himself to—and, arguably, past—the brink of what a person can take.

“Classes were hard, and sometimes required long nights in the library, but they weren’t that hard. A part of me had thought I’d finally be revealed as an intellectual fraud […] another part of me thought I’d be able to hack it only with extreme dedication […] but that didn’t end up being the case […] in classrooms and on tests, I largely held my own.”

Vance’s time at Yale sees him meet the woman he will marry and begin his journey down the road to being a lawyer. It also exposes how much of an outsider he feels, compared to his mainly upper-class peers. It is not the workload at Yale that Vance finds the most difficult; rather, it is learning how to take advantage of social capital, which involves learning and successfully utilizing the social etiquette of the elite.

“Usha was like my Yale spirit guide. She’d attended the university for college, too, and knew all the best coffee shops and places to eat. Her knowledge went much deeper, however: She instinctively understood the questions I didn’t even know to ask, and she always encouraged me to seek opportunities that I didn’t know existed.”

Usha is presented as virtually the opposite of Vance: she comes from a nuclear family, grew up in a calm, caring home, and understands the social mores intrinsic to success when interviewing for high-powered Washington, DC, law firms. Further, she is patient with Vance when he has moments of self-doubt that manifest as withdrawn sullenness or explosive rage.

“The interviews were about passing a social test—a test of belonging, of holding your own in a corporate boardroom, of making connections with potential future clients.”

Throughout the memoir, the social customs of various American demographics function as boundaries to Vance. He shows how it was difficult for Mamaw and Papaw to blend into the white, Midwestern culture in Middletown. He shows how Mamaw always praised the boyfriends of her daughters who were not from hillbilly stock, hoping that her offspring might effectively migrate out of Appalachian culture and into other subsets of American culture. We also see how difficult for and intimidating to Vance it is to pass a social test (among the American professional elite) he feels in some way he has little right to be taking.

“However, Amy’s advice stopped me from moving a thousand miles away from the person I eventually married. Most important, it allowed me to accept my place at [Yale]—it was okay to chart my own path and okay to put a girl above some short-sighted ambition. My professor gave me permission to be me.”

Vance spends the majority of his fledgling adult life putting duty before any sense of self. He illustrates how this is compulsory during his time in the Marines, and how hard he pushes himself during his time at Ohio State, eschewing a status quo undergraduate lifestyle to get ahead. Finally, at Yale Law School, it takes an authority figure—his professor—to, somewhat ironically, persuade him not to push himself as hard as he has been doing, and in turn, accept and believe in those aspects of his personal life he cherishes.

“I was, [Usha] said, a turtle. ‘Whenever something bad happens—even a hint of disagreement—you withdraw completely. It’s like you have a shell that you hide in.’”

Vance’s reaction extends from the array of adverse childhood experiences he encounters. Usha, Vance’s future wife, is able to identify and manage the various traits that manifest as a result of this.

“For kids like me, the part of the brain that deals with stress and conflict is always activated—the switch flipped indefinitely. We are constantly ready to fight or flee, because there is constant exposure to the bear, whether that bear is an alcoholic dad or an unhinged mom. We become hard-wired for conflict. And that wiring remains, even when there’s no more conflict to be had.”

Vance offers more on the pathology of those who, in adolescence, experience trauma due to various modes of abuse: either experiencing it firsthand or seeing it happen to those around them. Chaos and conflict are the norms in the households Vance is a part of growing up, and his hyper-elevated, fight-or-flight response remains on constant alert as an adult, despite no longer being in those environments.

“Papaw’s rare breakdown strikes at the heart of an important question for hillbillies like me: How much of our lives, good and bad, should we credit to personal decisions, and how much is just the inheritance of our culture, our families, and our parents who have failed their children?”

This quote exemplifies a key question of Hillbilly Elegy: How much of personal success or failure is environmental, and how much is internal or psychological? Throughout the book, Vance posits that Appalachians are too quick to blame the myriad (and justifiably culpable) external factors for their collectively poor societal position, without ever looking at themselves.

“By the grace of God I no longer hide from Mom. But I can’t fix everything, either. There is room now for both anger at Mom for the life she chooses and sympathy for the childhood she didn’t.”

In this final glimpse of Vance’s interactions with Bev, he attempts to help his mother out, or through, her heroin addiction. Addiction has destroyed much of Bev’s life, and in turn, greatly hindered the lives of those around her. Nonetheless, out of a sense of duty to family, Vance does not abandon Bev, balancing his contempt for her with sympathy for her disease of addiction.

“Part of the problem is how state laws define the family. For families like mine—and for many black and Hispanic families—grandparents, cousins, aunts, and uncles play an outsize role. Child services often cut them out of the picture […] in other words, our country’s social services weren’t made for hillbilly families, and they often made the problem worse.”

At various points, Vance alludes to needed public policy change if Appalachians’ collective societal position is to improve. One example of this, Vance believes, is the need to change how child and social services view the concept of “family,” one that is very different in affluent, nuclear families than it is among poorer, non-nuclear ones.

“Sometimes I view members of the elite with an almost primal scorn […] but I have to give it to them: Their children are happier and healthier, their divorce rates lower, their church attendance higher, their lives longer. These people are beating us at our own goddamned game.”

The aspects of hillbilly culture which Vance cherishes—large but close-knit families, the importance of religion in the community, and the general belief that joy is attainable—have largely vanished from Appalachian life, by the time Vance is an adult. This morbid, collective cynicism is something he views as absent from more privileged American demographics, and points out that it is his own white, working-class Americans who give less, who obsess over buying expensive items they do not need, and, increasingly, place themselves before others.