Book Review: Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis, J.D. Vance

      Hillbilly.  The label is well known throughout the US.   Boomers can recall hearing the term in reference to some Americans who were mountain dwellers, hill people, hard scrabble farmers living on the land and living off the land.  But it was understood that hillbillies are different from you and me.  Most Americans never met or knew a "real" hillbilly.  Maybe a cartoon character or two.  Remember the comic strip "Little Abner'?  So those folks were objects of ridicule going back generations.  Remember the legend of the Hatfields and McCoys?   They were real people and their feud was real as well.  Again, hillbillies: shoot first, ask questions later.  It's all about family.
      The author of this memoir, J.D. Vance, is a real life person, raised in hillbilly country, the grandson and son of natives of Appalachia: Kentucky.  He chronicles his youth and the turbulent life with a mother who was as unsettling as a mother could be.  He was essentially raised by his grandmother, who used her own principles about life to teach him the fundamentals of living in the midst of chaos.
       We know as a culture about the difficulties of the inner city, and all its history for the postwar years.   This memoir sheds light on another section of the country: rural America and what happens to those residents who cannot find or even pursue the American dream from their position.  His descriptions are startling, beginning with the absence of a father who never was able to bear the burden of family.   Vance's older sister is a strong role model and was able to offer strength and security when no one could or would.   Somehow, Vance was able to escape this cruel beginning.  His intimate knowledge of the culture and its members offers a look at American life that few knew even exists/existed.   But, it does. 
      His words offer truth and exposure of a little known part of America.  This account of that area will document the lives of those less fortunate who populate  Appalachia, aka: Coal Country.
      Mr. Vance has forsaken Appalachia for San Francisco where he is involved in venture capital and technology start ups and funding of new business models.   He's come a long way from the "hollow".
A NY Times best-seller.
5 * rating by Mayor's Office of Cultural Affairs