Hillbilly Elegy by J.D. Vance

Maren Wong, 11th Grade

J.D. Vance's famed bestseller Hillbilly Elegy is subtitled A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis. And, indeed, Vance seamlessly blends the familial and the cultural: framing the violence, drug addiction, and economic uncertainty that plagues his own family within the context of the Appalachian "hillbilly" culture in which he grew up. He pulls on scientific and sociological studies liberally and effectively as he paints a picture of lower-class white life in the Rust Belt. He portrays, with broad and easy-to-follow strokes, his social climb from rural Ohio to Yale Law School; he suggests policy changes that would ease others' paths up the socioeconomic ladder. 

But I finished Hillbilly Elegy wishing that Vance had told the tale not only of a family and culture in crisis but also of a person in crisis. The word "memoir" is derived from the French word for memory; and I wish that Vance had plumbed his memory for a psychological as well as sociological understanding of self. He lacks - and, at times, outright rejects - introspection. In doing so, he fails to fully elucidate a path forward for the many "hill people" whom he hopes to uplift.

Readers reach page 226 before Vance first acknowledges his inability to engage with his own emotions. After a fight with Usha (his then-girlfriend, now wife), he realizes that he needs to address the destructive behaviors he learned from his own parents in order to have a successful adult relationship. My thought, as I read this: yay! But Vance continues: "I tried to go to a counselor, but it was too weird. Talking to some stranger about my feelings just made me want to vomit. I did go to the library, and I learned that behavior I considered commonplace was the subject of pretty intense academic study."

And then Vance proceeds to tell us the exact details of this academic study. He gives his family members a quiz - making them rate, on a scale of 1-7, the number of traumatic experiences they had as children. He engages quantitatively, rather than qualitatively, with his own feelings. He doesn't think about his trauma; he counts it. Faced with the prospect of introspection, he decides instead to read a book. And of course, books can often help us look inside ourselves. But Vance takes an academic study as a substitute, rather than an aid, for self-study. And in doing so, he unwittingly sacrifices a revealing interview with the one person whose voice might have made Hillbilly Elegy truly extraordinary: J.D. Vance. Evading himself, Vance loses out - and so does his wife Usha.

"The sad fact is that I couldn't [fight my demons] without Usha. Even at my best, I'm a delayed explosion-I can be defused, but only with skill and precision. It's not just that I've learned to control myself but that Usha has learned to manage me." Vance has learned to control himself; he hasn't learned about himself. He is, he admits, "a delayed explosion" - and what's more, he's fine keeping it that way. In a deeply-uncomfortable expression of race and gender dynamics, Usha - an Indian American woman - is basically expected to be an instruction manual entitled How to Keep J.D. Vance from Blowing Up. She's also expected to be the mechanic who, "with skill and precision," follows this manual. Uh, what wife wants to "manage" her husband? Her husband who compares himself to a dangerous explosion? 

Vance's lack of introspection enables a royally-screwed-up understanding of gender and race that casts an inescapable pall on what would otherwise be a compelling memoir. (Though I should, by page 230, have known that Vance lacks an appreciation for the intersection of race, class, caste, and gender. He writes in his intro: "I hope readers of this book will be able to take from it an appreciation of how class and family affect the poor without filtering their views through a racial prism." A difficult feat, when discussing the American working class.) Perhaps because of this narrow understanding of class and caste, Vance speaks in platitudes about the "American Dream" that again suggest his dearth of introspective depth.

"I was upwardly mobile. I had made it. I had achieved the American Dream. Or at least that's how it looked to an outsider." Vance ticks all the boxes, tells us all the logical reasons about why and how he "made it": his supportive grandmother, his grandfather's love for learning, his time in the military. And while he emphasizes that his "storybook" social climb only appears fairytale- esque "to an outsider," he himself also seems to prefer this vision of his own life - in which socioeconomic success is achieved and the rest of his life is just gravy. (Because, you know, he has his wife to make sure he doesn't explode). It's as though Vance looks at himself from a distance, as "the guy who achieved the American Dream." He provides politicians with policy solutions to help "hill people" like him achieve the Dream; but, by avoiding any explorations of an inward, psychological journey, I fear that he fails to provide those same "hill people" with spiritual guidance. 

He maintains the outsider's distance from himself. He wants to vomit when he thinks about his feelings. He depends on his wife to help him exert self-control. I finished Hillbilly Elegy grateful for Vance's in-depth portrait of a family and culture in crisis. And I finished wishing more for Usha, and for Vance himself.