86 pages • 2 hours read
J. D. VanceHillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture
Nonfiction | Autobiography / Memoir | Adult | Published in 2016A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Themes
The Appalachian Diaspora
Migration has both psychological and sociological elements in Hillbilly Elegy. For Vance, one form his migration takes is that of migrating from one class to another. He transcends his poverty to become a Yale Law School graduate and member of the upper-middle class, living in Silicon Valley. This is in juxtaposition to the fates of the vast majority of Appalachians who grow up poor and in single-parent homes.
Vance spends his youth in a state of perpetual migration, moving from one home to the next with his mother, in between living with his biological father in Kentucky, and with Mamaw in Middletown. As an adult, he leaves Middletown for the Marines, returning to Ohio to attend Ohio State University, before again leaving to attend Yale. While Vance does return to Ohio at the end of the text, he settles in Cincinnati and is thereby representative of the phenomenon known as “brain drain,” where the best and brightest of those from rural areas leave their native regions for better opportunities in urban centers.
In the 20th century, a very large number of Kentucky Appalachians departed their native area for employment opportunities in the Midwest and beyond. Papaw’s employer, Armco Steel, aggressively recruited in Kentucky Appalachia; one of the reasons Armco and other companies recruiting in the area were so successful was the companies’ encouragement of prospective employees to uproot and move entire, extended families with them. To this end, Kentucky Appalachia—and the entire Appalachian region of the US—saw two large out-migrations, the first after World War I and the second after World War II.
Throughout the memoir, Vance notes the personal and cultural difficulties he faced moving from a low-income background to a middle- and upper-class lifestyle. He notes that people from low-income backgrounds find it difficult to adapt to the norms, behaviors, and expectations of middle or upper-class environments because these environments harbor unconscious biases. Therefore, people like Vance must learn different communication styles, social etiquette, and lifestyle habits to fit in. Networking and socializing in professional settings feel unfamiliar and intimidating, which he experiences at Yale. He also notes the stress of adapting to a new lifestyle, coupled with the pressure to succeed and the fear of returning to a lower socioeconomic status, led him to have mental health issues like anxiety and depression. The lack of a supportive network that understands these unique pressures can exacerbate these issues. Luckily, Vance had a supportive partner, Usha, who helped him make the cultural and class transition.
Societal Laws Versus Family Loyalty
One mode by which Vance seeks to differentiate hillbilly culture from other white cultures in the US is through the large and comparably unstructured family units of Appalachians, his own family being his chief example. Vance grows up in households where his mom is working, addicted to drugs, or both, and with a rotating cast of father figures, including his biological father, his adoptive father, and a series of other men his mother marries or dates. Like many other Appalachians (and non-Appalachians), Vance is raised as much by his grandparents as he is by a parent, a common trait among many communities hovering at or below the poverty line. His sister, Lindsay, often functions in a quasi-parental role as well. Vance offers, “We didn’t live a peaceful life in a small nuclear family. We lived a chaotic life in big groups of aunts, uncles, grandparents and cousins” (69).
On multiple occasions in Hillbilly Elegy, an adolescent Vance is forced to choose between lying to an authority figure to protect his mother and telling the truth, knowing that his mom will get in further trouble with authorities (namely, the police and county child services). After the incident in which Vance is forced to flee his mother’s car for the safety of a stranger’s home, his mother is arrested for a domestic violence misdemeanor. The family hires a lawyer, who “never explicitly encouraged dishonesty” (78), and Vance’s family works out an arrangement: Vance will say his mom never threatened him (which she did), and Vance will live with Mamaw, with Vance’s mom, Bev, retaining official custody. Vance’s lies under oath allow Bev to avoid jail time. Vance adds that “Mamaw told me that if Mom had a problem with the arrangement, she could talk to the barrel of Mamaw’s gun. This was hillbilly justice, and it didn’t fail me” (78).
This notion of family code transcending broader, civil and criminal law is manifest among Vance’s extended family, and a trait that Vance perceives as typifying hillbilly culture. Vance again places family code before civil authority figures when his mother forces him to meet with a therapist, between Vance’s eighth and ninth grade years. During the meeting, Vance withholds the unsavory portions of his mother’s behavior for fear of getting her into trouble with child protective services. “So I didn’t miss the irony of lying to a therapist (to protect Mom) lest I ignite another intervention by the county child services” (121).
Personal Versus Societal Responsibility for the Disenfranchised
A recurring consideration in the book is where to place blame for the collective plight of Appalachians—and, by extension, America’s white working class. Vance points out how the decision for where this blame should fall often aligns along party lines, with liberals most often believing it is society’s responsibility to aid the disenfranchised, while conservatives are more inclined to blame the government, and not want governmental policies to encroach upon citizens’ lives.
Vance concedes that there’s no easy answer for the problems plaguing working-class white people but asserts that it is up to members of those communities to take on more personal responsibility for bettering themselves and their communities. While Vance says few ideal employment opportunities exist for Appalachians and those living in Middletown, Ohio, he also points to a cynical outlook by these populations toward employment, their citizens’ lack of work ethic exacerbating the problem. He notes that he benefitted from many social programs throughout his life and feels these are adequate. In one case, he notes that his high school being ranked near the bottom of Ohio schools was the fault of the students, not the teachers or the institution itself.
One of Vance’s focuses is on how ACEs negatively affect people’s behavior in adulthood, especially in controlling their temper and maintaining relationships. He cites studies that discuss how People who have experienced ACEs often have difficulty managing their tempers due to the long-lasting impact of these traumatic events on their brain development, emotional regulation, and stress response systems. For instance, ACEs can lead to a heightened and chronic activation of the body’s stress response system. This continuous state of high alert, often referred to as hyperarousal, can make it difficult for individuals to calm down after being provoked. The body’s “fight or flight” response is easily triggered and causes disproportionate reactions to stressors and results in difficulty managing temper. He notes that he experienced this feeling in his arguments with Usha and that, when he asked his family members, including Mamaw, Aunt Wee, and Lindsay, they all admitted the same thing: Even nonphysical confrontations made them feel like they were in a physical fight.
Being in a supportive relationship helped Vance overcome these feelings, but he notes that for people like Aunt Wee and Dan, who have good relationships but still live in an impoverished community, these negative coping mechanisms are more difficult to abandon. Staying in a community where abusive behavior is the norm makes it difficult for people to see how these patterns negatively affect their lives. Vance tried going to therapy, though this was unsuccessful, but he did learn through research, confronting his issues, and being willing to change.
