Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture

According to Vance, “the existence of [this] book […] is somewhat absurd” (1). He believes that graduating from Yale Law School is his coolest accomplishment and that all else he has achieved is “quite ordinary” but “doesn’t happen to most kids who grow up” as he did (1). Vance gives some background on growing up poor in Ohio and describes his subdemographic: “working-class white Americans of Scots-Irish descent who have no college degree” (3).

Vance notes that Scots-Irish “family structures, religion, and politics, and social lives all remain unchanged compared to the wholesale abandonment of tradition that’s occurred nearly everywhere else” (3). He identifies the positive traits of this demographic, including intense loyalty and dedication to family and country, then the negative ones, with innate xenophobia chief among them.

Vance also describes Appalachia, illustrating how large the region is and how cohesive its culture remains. He identifies Greater Appalachia’s political realignment from Democrat to Republican post-Nixon as redefining American politics. He adds, “it is in Greater Appalachia where the fortunes of working-class whites seem dimmest. From low social mobility to poverty to divorce and drug addiction, my home is a hub of misery” (4).