“Hillbilly Elegy” by J D Vance

To be honest, I had never ever heard of J D Vance until recently. Only when Donald Trump chose him to be his running mate did I hear his name. The focus of many stories I read here in India were more about his wife Usha. That was because her parents were immigrants from India.

I then found his book, ” Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis” (Harper, 2016). You must remember he wrote this long before he became a Senator from Ohio. In 2016, no one would have imagined that Vance would become a candidate for Vice President of the United States! This happened only in July 2024. We should keep this in mind as we read Vance’s book.

This is Vance’s personal account of what it was like to have a deeply troubled family life. I admired his honesty in sketching out the principal characters in his life. These include his drug -addicted much-married mother; his sister, who was his biggest support; and his maternal grandparents. They influenced him deeply as he grew up. Indeed, it was his grandmother who played a huge role in shaping his thinking . She helped him escape out of the poverty- stricken, addiction- oriented life he would otherwise have led.

Many people, especially those outside the US, believe that all white people in the US are very well off. Vance’s book describes the difficulties faced by most poor white families in small towns and mining communities. These were compounded when blue collared jobs became scarce. Manufacturing and mining took a steep dive in profitability. Unemployment grew in leaps and bounds. This phenomenon made large parts of the northeast of the United States being called the Rust Belt. As a consequence of economic downfall, social and family ties were adversely affected. The number of broken marriages, broken homes and domestic turbulence increased substantially. Vance lived through all this as a kid. It was naturally his ambition to break out of the chains of poverty.

Vance explains how his four year spell in the US Marine Corps was a turning point in his life. He then attended Ohio State University -not surprisingly the first from his family to do so. He worked hard to achieve his dream of getting admitted into and graduating from the prestigious Yale Law School.

And no, though his wife Usha is mentioned in the book, not much is written about her. Of course, Vance describes how much she helped him at Yale Law School. That apart readers in India looking for stories about her family would be disappointed. I don’t think he even mentioned that her parents migrated from India!

The book underlines how adversity is a tough teacher. You learn a lot when you are dealt with many knocks in your life. Especially when you face many hardships- financial and emotional- at an early and impressionable age.