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| by C.J. Chase |
Several years ago, I wrote book review for
Charles Murray’s Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010, which chronicles how our society is stratifying into an educated elite
vs. everyone else. Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis by debut author J.D. Vance, is a good companion book to that one.
My interest was piqued when I read several reviews
(including criticisms from both the left and the right) and then spoke to
someone who’d read (and liked) it. I decided I needed to try it for myself.
Vance is a young man to be writing a memoir—only 31 at the
time. He begins by outlining his grandparents’ story. Bonnie Blanton was 14 and
pregnant when she eloped with 17-year-old Jim Vance. They decided to leave the
family homestead in a Kentucky “holler” and head north to the industrial towns
of Ohio. The young couple lost that baby, but they later had three more
children, a boy and two girls.
Ohio might be just across the river from Kentucky, but
Appalachian honor culture was a world away from the orderly, and rather boring,
suburbs of the 1950’s. Separated from all that was familiar, the family started
to spiral down into alcohol abuse and marital infidelity. Vance’s mother
never recovered from the increasing dysfunction, and her own adulthood became a
revolving door of boyfriends and husbands.
The only truly consistent person in Vance’s life was with
his grandmother, and by the time he was in high school, he lived with her.
After high school, he joined the military and served in Iraq. The Marines were
the making of Vance, teaching the discipline that had been lacking in his
family life. After getting out, he went to Ohio State and then was one of the
few graduates of a public university accepted into Yale Law School.
Some lessons from Vance’s life:
·
Poverty is as much a state of mind as a number.
At one point in Vance’s youth, his mother and her
husband/boyfriend/man-of-the-moment pulled down a six-figure household income.
And yet, they had nothing to show for it because they spent the money
frivolously rather than acquiring savings or assets.
·
If you are poor (or just have the mentality of
the poor), it is very difficult to pull yourself out. The people around you
tend to be people with the same mindset, and there is no one to show you a
different way. Simple things, like college applications or college financial
aid, are complicated to those who have no assistance or guidance.
·
As people become convinced the deck is stacked
against them, they give up trying. Vance wrote about the difficulty companies have finding unskilled workers who will actually work. One example was a young man
with a baby who landed a good paying job for one with his (lack of) skills. One
would think he would be thrilled with the chance to earn a decent income, but
not having learned discipline, he was so unreliable his employer eventually
fired him.
Reading this book caused me to ponder my own family
background. At one point, my ancestors suffered from the same destructive
forces as Vance’s. My great-grandfather grew up in Appalachia, the illiterate son
of an alcoholic, but he changed the trajectory of his life and his descendants’
lives. Unlike his father, he worked hard, married a fine woman, and made
certain his children received educations. Even though my grandfather stayed in
Reese Hollow to take over the family farm (his siblings left to become teachers
and a minister), he too worked hard and married well.
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| My g-grandparents with their five (surviving) children. My grandfather is the little guy in front. |
My mother grew up on that same farm, the seventh of my
grandparent’s ten children. Like Vance’s grandparents, she left home at 18 for
the big city (Chicago, in her case) during the great migration. But she had a high school diploma, a strong
faith, and a supportive family to sustain her.
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| My grandfather with the oldest 7 of his 10 children. My mom is the baby on his lap. |
Hillbilly Elegy is
a good first step toward bringing understanding to a part of the country that
has been in decline. The problems of the Vance family are found across much of
the now de-industrialized Rust Belt where hopelessness has set in. What is to
be done? There are no easy answers. The problems are as much spiritual ones as
financial or educational ones.
I think Hillbilly
Elegy would make a very good book for church reading groups. Perhaps it
will spur Christians to mission work right here on the home front.
If my people, who are called by
my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their
wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and
will heal their land.
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