BOOK REVIEW
HILLBILLY ELEGY : A MEMOIR OF A FAMILY AND CULTURE IN CRISIS
By J . D . Vance © 2016 Harper
Reviewed by
Elizabeth A . Amin , MD
J
. D . Vance graduated from Yale Law School with the class of 2013 . It seems that no one was more surprised than he that a ) he was accepted to Yale in 2010 ; b ) that Yale ’ s generous need-based scholarships made his time there a good business proposition and c ) that by the time he graduated he had access to the networks ( social capital ) that former Presidents , Supreme Court Justices and Capitol legislators took for granted . It was at Yale that this self-described tall , white , straight guy , with roots in the hollers of Breathitt County , Kentucky , was thrust into a world in which he felt like “ an alien whose spaceship had crashed in Oz .”
This sense of alienation seems to have been the stimulus for his book . My impression is that he embarked on the memoir not with any desire for self-gratification or self-congratulation but to search for answers . The book is a sincere tribute to those family members , friends and mentors who helped him achieve his success . It is also an attempt to understand and explain the social , cultural , economic and educational factors that contribute to “ his people ’ s failure to progress .” Both the book , published June 28 , 2016 and J . D . himself , became reference points as pundits tried to explain the success of Donald Trump initially in the Republican primaries and subsequently in the general election . I was intrigued - reading about , listening to and watching the author . Reading the book was almost a secondary activity .
J . D . was born James Donald Bowman in the late summer of 1984 , in Middletown Ohio , north along Route 23 from his ancestral home in Jackson , Kentucky . He was his mother ’ s second child ( with her second husband ). His beloved sister Lindsay was five years older than he . She and their maternal grandparents , Mamaw and Papaw Vance , were the stabilizing influences in J . D .’ s early life . He recounts in some detail the history of his maternal great-grandparents , the Blantons , who with their extended families spent their lives almost entirely in Jackson . He ferrets out the probable reason why Mamaw ( Bonnie Blanton ) and Papaw ( Jim Vance ) headed north to Middletown as a young married couple . She was 13 and pregnant and he was only 16 ; both had to fake their ages on the baby ’ s birth certificate . The baby died shortly after birth , but the young couple accepted their lot . Papaw went to work for Armco Steel . He made a good living . They moved up into the middle class in Middletown , and even though Mamaw kept and killed chickens in her back yard on a neat suburban street , eventually they made some friends in the neighborhood . Papaw taught himself to fix cars as a sideline . A son , Jimmy , was born in 1951 . During the following decade Mamaw struggled through eight miscarriages but eventually they had two daughters , Bev , ( J . D .' s mother ) born in 1961 , and Lori , born in 1963 .
Uncle Jimmy Vance , to whom J . D . remains very close , furnished him with details of the family saga . By the time Jimmy was old
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