I am a first generation American, and not entirely a self-made man. My parents started me off in life in America with every possible resource that they could afford or provide - from good schooling to more important, constant encouragement to patience with my many characteristics and turn as a rebel teenager.
But the unfortunate world that J.D. Vance reveals in his excellent and truly heartbreaking book "Hillbilly Elegy" is one that I know only through some of m friends when I was growing up in Pittsburgh, living in Columbia, South Carolina, Richmond, Virginia or hanging out with friends in Steubenville, Ohio and Morgantown, West Virginia. *What is a Hillbilly *What is an Elegy J.D. (our author) grew up in Appalachian Ohio and Kentucky, in impoverished white neighborhoods where family struggle and disorder was a constant, work was not, and even numerous pawn shops even closed stores. Yes, that poor! Just imagine what it was like for J.D. when he somehow managed - through the high expectations of his grandmother, the order and discipline of the Marines, and his own intelligent - to get himself into Yale Law School. So his life was no longer the experience of the "abandoned son of a man I hardly knew and a woman I wished I didn't" but as a highly sought-after member of America's most elite universities. As a first generation American, early on, I thought of myself as being a stranger in a strange land. Just imagine how J.D. felt. When he was at Yale University, recruiters from law firms were beating a path to his door. "Two years earlier, I had applied to dozens of places in the hope of landing a well-paying job after college but was rebuffed every time," he writes. "After only a year at Yale Law, my classmates and I were being handed six-figures salaries by men who had argued before the US Supreme Court." J.D. shares deeply personal stories like these in his book, but "Hillbilly Elegy" casts light on America's enormous cultural divide - a topic that had become far more important than the author ever imagined when he was writing this book. And not many of us get to see or experience it. I was very excited to read Hillbilly Elegy not just because of the now visible indications for American Politics. But because I was learning about a part of America, we often ignore or neglect. I have always been fascinated by politics and economics. How people move up from the lowest levels of the economic ladder (what experts call mobility from poverty). And pursuing the "American Dream." Although the book doesn't use much data, I truly came away with fresh insights into the multidimensional cultural and family dynamics that add to poverty and much more in this land. Hillbilly Elegy is not just an essential read in today's America; it surprised me too. There is no "how will it end?" -Type mystery was driving this story. I recognized from the start that J.D outlives his rough and for the most part fatherless childhood and lands at Yale Law School. But the book was such a great read in part because of J.D.'s courage and stamina. He learns early in his life that there is "no greater disloyalty than class betrayal." By writing this book, he risks being called a traitor by calling a culture that, in his view, is hurting from self-inflicted wounds. One of the truly most brilliant parts of the book is the part where he admits that his childhood troubles his marriage. "Even at my best, I'm a delayed explosion - I can be defused, but only with skill and precision... In my worst moments, I convince myself that there is no exit." The book is full of interesting characters. My favorites are Vance's grandmother and grandfather, Mamaw and Papaw. J.D.'s half-sister Lindsay is another one. In Hillbilly Elegy, J.D. doesn't pretend to be a policy expert or a scholar. He doesn't offer simple solutions either. As I read the book, I imagined disadvantaged and impoverished communities, rural and urban alike in America. The key point for me was the complex realities of poverty in America that we don't get to see much these days. If you want to learn more about the part of America, we don't get to see much, talk about, or understand fully, read Hillbilly Elegy.
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