Vance uses his life story and that of his family and extended family in order to explain the cultural and economical ways of the hillbilly. Just what is a hillbilly? Generally, they are someone who is from the Appalachian Mountain region who is poor, rural, and working class. Sometimes undereducated. The stereotype has them with no teeth because they drink Moutain Dew and don't go to the dentist. Also that they are gun happy people ready to use them especially if you get their daughter pregnant. The heavy popping of opioid pills such as Percocet and Oxy began in the mountains of West Virginia and Kentucky, which is where the term "pillbilly" comes from.
Vance's Mamaw and Pawpaw came from a holler in Kentucky called Jackson. He got her pregnant at the age of thirteen and the two took the famous Route 23 out of Kentucky to Ohio (sometimes referred to as "Middletucky") where a good job at a steel manufacturer, Amaco, awaited. They weren't the only ones. Plenty of people from Appalachia left for jobs in Michigan, Indiana, Pennsylvania (or "Pennsyltucky"), and Illinois. In the 1950s thirteen out of one hundred in Kentucky took the hillbilly highway out and in Harlan County Kentucky, thirty percent of its population, mostly coal miners, left.
Life was hard for his Mamaw and Pawpaw. She had several miscarriages and three children that survived. These included Uncle Jimmy, Aunt Wee, and his mother. His Pawpaw was an alcoholic and things could get ugly in their house. He would straighten himself out and while he and his wife stayed married they would end up with their own separate homes once their kids were grown, but remained close. But heaven help anyone who bothered one of the children or a member of the family. When Uncle Jimmy was five, he saw a toy in the pharmacy that he wanted for Christmas and his parents told him to go in and look at it while they finished shopping at a store. When he picked it up to play with it, the clerk in the store told him that he wasn't allowed to touch the toy and kicked the boy out of the pharmacy. When his parents found him and found out what happened they went in and trashed the place and stood up for their son's honor, because how dare someone tell their son that he can't come in their store.
He would take a while to adjust to a new place as his mother moved him and his older sister, Lydnsey, around to different homes with different men. The one constant was his Mamaw's place. Life with his mother was hard as she had a temper and in her relationships, fighting was the only way she knew how to deal with things. So dishes went flying and she would get violent with the men in her life.
According to J.D., this was how most hillbillies acted. Also, they spent money they didn't have at Christmas on fancy gifts for the kids, hoping the IRS refund check would cover it. Sometimes there would be someone in the house with a substance abuse problem. In J.D.'s case, it was his mother who got hooked on pills. They also abuse the Welfare system and try to get out of work if they can.
Vance basically says that you have to pull yourself up by your bootstraps, but most of these people don't have boots. And he had helped himself. His Mamaw received a pension check from his Papaw when he died and likely social security. He credits his Mamaw, his sister, his teachers, and the Marines with helping him to avoid going down the wrong path and instead earning his degree at Ohio State and his law degree at Yale, something practically unheard of from where he was from. He offers a lot of criticism but no solutions and he overgeneralizes and forgets the people in his life that weren't loud and violent like his sister and Uncle Jimmy and Aunt Wee and cousin Gail and their spouses. It's like he wants them to be the exception that proves the rule, but there are more of them in his life than the violent argumentative types. Also, I think there are plenty of people who are dying to get jobs of any kind if you just give them a chance. And there are programs that train people in Appalachia to learn a new trade for a company that is in the area. Vance is close to using stereotypes, though with stereotypes there is some truth to them. Read this book with caution.
*Vance is contemplating a run for office and it is my opinion that he wrote this book as a stepping stone for this purpose. But that is just my opinion.
* I add this as I think it might be interesting and be a counterpoint to the book.
I was born in poverty in Appalachia. ‘Hillbilly Elegy’ doesn’t speak for me.
J.D. Vance, author of “Hillbilly Elegy,” in Washington in January. (Astrid Riecken/For The Washington Post)
By Betsy Rader September 1, 2017
Betsy Rader is an employment lawyer at Betsy Rader Law LLC, located in Chagrin Falls, Ohio. She is running as a Democrat to represent Ohio’s 14th Congressional District in the U.S. House.
J.D. Vance’s book “Hillbilly Elegy,” published last year, has been assigned to students and book clubs across the country. Pundits continue to cite it as though the author speaks for all of us who grew up in poverty. But Vance doesn’t speak for me, nor do I believe that he speaks for the vast majority of the working poor.
From a quick glance at my résumé, you might think me an older, female version of Vance. I was born in Appalachia in the 1960s and grew up in the small city of Newark, Ohio. When I was 9, my parents divorced. My mom became a single mother of four, with only a high school education and little work experience. Life was tough; the five of us lived on $6,000 a year.
Like Vance, I attended Ohio State University on scholarship, working nights and weekends. I graduated at the top of my class and, again like Vance, attended Yale Law School on a financial-need scholarship. Today, I represent people who’ve been fired illegally from their jobs. And now that I’m running for Congress in Northeast Ohio, I speak often with folks who are trying hard but not making much money.
Although high school graduation rates are rising and there are more private and federal grants available, most low-income students have a tough time attending and staying in college. Here are nine facts about poor students and the college experience. (Video: Claritza Jimenez/Photo: iStock/The Washington Post)
A self-described conservative, Vance largely concludes that his family and peers are trapped in poverty due to their own poor choices and negative attitudes. But I take great exception when he makes statements such as: “We spend our way into the poorhouse. We buy giant TVs and iPads. Our children wear nice clothes thanks to high-interest credit cards and payday loans. We purchase homes we don’t need, refinance them for more spending money, and declare bankruptcy. . . . Thrift is inimical to our being.”
Who is this “we” of whom he speaks? Vance’s statements don’t describe the family in which I grew up, and thy don’t describe the families I meet who are struggling to make it in America today. I know that my family lived on $6,000 per year because as children, we sat down with pen and paper to help find a way for us to live on that amount. My mom couldn’t even qualify for a credit card, much less live on credit. She bought our clothes at discount stores.
Thrift was not inimical to our being; it was the very essence of our being.
With lines like “We choose not to work when we should be looking for jobs,” Vance’s sweeping stereotypes are shark bait for conservative policymakers. They feed into the mythology that the undeserving poor make bad choices and are to blame for their own poverty, so taxpayer money should not be wasted on programs to help lift people out of poverty. Now these inaccurate and dangerous generalizations have been made required college reading.
Here is the simple fact: Most poor people work. Seventy-eight percent of families on Medicaid include a household member who is working. People work hard in necessary and important jobs that often don’t pay them enough to live on. For instance, child-care workers earn an average of $22,930 per year, and home health aides average $23,600. (Indeed, it is a sad irony that crucial jobs around caretaking and children have always paid very little.)
The problem with living in constant economic insecurity is not a lack of thrift, it is that people in these circumstances are always focused on the current crisis. They can’t plan for the future because they have so much to deal with in the present. And the future seems so bleak that it feels futile to sacrifice for it. What does motivate most people is the belief that the future can be better and that we have a realistic opportunity to achieve it. But sometimes that takes help.
Yes, I worked hard, but I didn’t just pull myself up by my bootstraps. And neither did Vance. The truth is that people helped us out: My public school’s guidance counselor encouraged me to go to college. The government helped us out: I received scholarships and subsidized federal loans to help pay my educational expenses. The list of helpers goes on.
Now that so many people have read “Hillbilly Elegy” this summer, I hope they draw this better moral from the story: Individuals can make a difference in others’ lives, and by providing opportunities for all, our government can do the same. Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness should be legitimate expectations for everyone, “hillbillies” included.
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