Poverty and blame in Appalachia

J. D. Vance’s memoir quickly jumped onto the New York Times bestseller list. While it has earned its place as a book that’s entertaining, dramatic, and often painful to read, it has also gotten a bump because of election season. Vance, a working-class Scots-Irishman from Kentucky and Ohio, speaks for people whose opinions aren’t often heard. They happen to be his people, and Vance tells us why they are beleaguered, discouraged, patriotic, and Republican. And although he does not count himself among them, most are Donald Trump supporters.

Vance no longer lives in the Appalachian communities where he was raised. He attended college and law school, and then he became a principal at a prestigious San Francisco global investment firm. As an urban professional in his early thirties, he’s busy with travel, work, and a new marriage. So why did he stop to write a memoir?

Because leaving hillbilly America—let alone attending college and landing a white-collar job—is so rare that Vance is still in shock. The story of his narrow escape from a highly dysfunctional and dispirited society conveys both his amazement at his journey and his concern for those left behind. His peers and friends outside of Appalachia had no idea who he was—no idea about his people, his childhood, or their troubles. So he wrote Hillbilly Elegy. “I want people to understand what happens in the lives of the poor and the psychological impact that spiritual and material poverty has on their children.”