Hillbilly Elegy

Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis is a 2016 memoir by J. D. Vance about the Appalachian values of his Kentucky family and the social and socioeconomic problems of his hometown of Middletown, Ohio, where his mother's parents moved when they were young.

In 2020, it was adapted into the film Hillbilly Elegy directed by Ron Howard and starring Glenn Close and Amy Adams. The film received mixed reviews, being nominated for both the Golden Raspberries and the Academy Awards.

Summary
Vance describes his upbringing and family background while growing up in Middletown, Ohio. He writes about a family history of poverty and manual labour jobs, and compares this life with his perspective after leaving it.

Though Vance was born and raised in Middletown, his mother and her family were from Breathitt County, Kentucky. Their Appalachian culture include traits such as loyalty and love of country despite family violence and verbal abuse. He recounts his grandparents' alcoholism as well as his unstable mother's history of drug addictions and failed relationships. Vance's grandparents reconciled and became his guardians. His strict but loving grandmother pushed him and Vance was able to leave Middletown for undergraduate studies at Ohio State and post-graduate studies at Yale Law School.

Alongside his personal history, Vance raises questions about the responsibility of his family and local people for their misfortunes. Vance cites hillbilly culture and its encouragement of Social disintegration, along with the economic insecurity of Appalachia. Vance's arguments rely on personal experience, such as when he worked as a grocery store cashier he watched welfare recipients talking on cell phones, whereas the working Vance could not afford one.

His antipathy of those who seemed to profit from poor behavior while he struggled, especially combined with his values of personal responsibility and tough love, is presented as a rationale for Appalachia's political swing from a strong Democratic bias to a strong Republican affiliation. Likewise, he tells stories highlighting the lack of work ethic of the local people, including the story of a man who quit his job after expressing dislike over his work hours, as well as a co-worker with a pregnant girlfriend who would simply skip work unexcused.

Publication
In July 2016, the book was popularized by an interview with the author published by The American Conservative. The volume of requests briefly disabled the website. Halfway through August, The New York Times wrote that the title had remained in the top ten Amazon bestsellers since the interview's publication.

Vance credits his Yale contract law professor Amy Chua as the "authorial godmother" of the book.

Reception
The book reached the top of The New York Times Best Seller list in August 2016 and January 2017.

American Conservative contributor and blogger Rod Dreher expressed admiration for Hillbilly Elegy, saying that Vance "draws conclusions... that may be hard for some people to take. But Vance has earned the right to make those judgments. This was his life. He speaks with authority that has been extremely hard won." The following month, Dreher posted about his theories about why liberals loved the book. New York Post columnist and editor of Commentary John Podhoretz described the book as among the year's most provocative.

The book was positively received by conservatives such as National Review columnist Mona Charen and National Review editor and Slate columnist Reihan Salam. German chancellor Olaf Scholz called the book "a very touching personal story of how a young man with poor starting conditions makes his way" in an interview with Süddeutsche Zeitung in July 2023.

By contrast, other journalists criticized Vance for generalizing too much from his personal upbringing in suburban Ohio. Jared Yates Sexton of Salon criticized Vance for his "damaging rhetoric" and for endorsing policies used to "gut the poor". He argues that Vance "totally discounts the role racism played in the white working class's opposition to President Obama." Sarah Jones of The New Republic mocked Vance as "the false prophet of Blue America," dismissing him as "a flawed guide to this world" and the book as little more than "a list of myths about welfare queens repackaged as a primer on the white working class."

Historian Bob Hutton wrote in Jacobin that Vance's argument relied on circular logic and eugenics, ignored existing scholarship on Appalachian poverty, and was "primarily a work of self-congratulation." Sarah Smarsh with The Guardian noted that "most downtrodden whites are not conservative male Protestants from Appalachia" and called into question Vance's generalizations about the white working class from his personal upbringing.

The New York Times wrote that Vance's confrontation of a social taboo is admirable, regardless of whether the reader agrees with his conclusions. The newspaper writes that Vance's subject is despair, and his argument is more generous in that it blames fatalism and learned helplessness rather than indolence.

A 2017 Brookings Institution report noted that "J. D. Vance's Hillbilly Elegy became a national bestseller for its raw, emotional portrait of growing up in and eventually out of a poor rural community riddled by drug addiction and instability." Vance's account anecdotally confirmed the report's conclusion that family stability is essential to upward mobility.

The book provoked a response in the form of an anthology, Appalachian Reckoning: A Region Responds to Hillbilly Elegy, edited by Anthony Harkins and Meredith McCarroll. The essays in the volume criticize Vance for making broad generalizations and reproducing myths about poverty.

A key reason for Hillbilly Elegy 's widespread popularity following its publication in 2016 was its role in explaining Donald Trump's rise to the top of the Republican Party. In particular, it purported to explain why white, working-class voters became attracted to Trump as a political leader. Vance himself offered commentary on how his book provides perspective on why a voter from the "hillbilly" demographic would support Trump.

Although he does not mention Trump in the book, Vance openly criticized the now-former president while discussing his memoir in interviews following its release. Vance walked these comments back when he joined the 2022 U.S. Senate race in Ohio, and now openly endorses Trump. In July 2024, Vance was picked by Trump to be his running mate on the Republican ticket for the 2024 U.S. Presidential election. After the announcement, sales of the book and viewership for the film on Netflix increased dramatically.

Film adaptation
A film adaptation was released in select theaters in the United States on November 11, 2020, then digitally on Netflix on November 24. It was directed by Ron Howard and stars Glenn Close, Amy Adams, Gabriel Basso and Haley Bennett. Although a few days of filming were done in the book's setting of Middletown, Ohio, much of the filming in the summer of 2019 was in Atlanta, Clayton and Macon, Georgia, using the code name "IVAN."