Hillbilly Elegy
A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis
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Narrated by:
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J. D. Vance
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By:
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J. D. Vance
About this listen
Winner, 2017 APA Audie Awards - Nonfiction
From a former marine and Yale Law School graduate, a powerful account of growing up in a poor Rust Belt town that offers a broader, probing look at the struggles of America's white working class.
Hillbilly Elegy is a passionate and personal analysis of a culture in crisis - that of white working-class Americans. The decline of this group, a demographic of our country that has been slowly disintegrating over 40 years, has been reported on with growing frequency and alarm but has never before been written about as searingly from the inside. J. D. Vance tells the true story of what a social, regional, and class decline feels like when you were born with it hung around your neck.
The Vance family story begins hopefully in postwar America. J. D.'s grandparents were "dirt poor and in love" and moved north from Kentucky's Appalachia region to Ohio in the hopes of escaping the dreadful poverty around them. They raised a middle-class family, and eventually their grandchild (the author) would graduate from Yale Law School, a conventional marker of their success in achieving generational upward mobility.
But as the family saga of Hillbilly Elegy plays out, we learn that this is only the short, superficial version. Vance's grandparents, his aunt, his uncle, his sister, and most of all his mother struggled profoundly with the demands of their new middle-class life and were never able to fully escape the legacy of abuse, alcoholism, poverty, and trauma so characteristic of their part of America. Vance piercingly shows how he himself still carries around the demons of their chaotic family history.
A deeply moving memoir with its share of humor and vividly colorful figures, Hillbilly Elegy is the story of how upward mobility really feels. And it is an urgent and troubling meditation on the loss of the American dream for a large segment of this country.
©2016 J. D. Vance (P)2016 HarperCollins PublishersListeners also enjoyed...
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Disappointed
- By tammy alvarez on 01-13-19
By: Jane Isay
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Have a New Teenager by Friday
- From Mouthy and Moody to Respectful and Responsible in 5 Days
- By: Kevin Leman
- Narrated by: Kirby Heybourne
- Length: 9 hrs and 28 mins
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Congratulations! You have a teenager in your home. Life will never quite be the same again (of course, you already know that). But it can be better than you’ve ever dreamed. In fact, you’re just five days away from your teenager asking, “What can I do to help?” Guaranteed! With his signature wit and commonsense psychology, internationally recognized family expert and New York Times best-selling author Dr. Kevin Leman will help you. your teenager’s life. With Dr. Leman’s instinct and insight, plus an index with gutsy advice on 75 hot-button issues that keep parents up at night.
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Listen with a Critical Mind
- By Stephanie on 03-25-13
By: Kevin Leman
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Normal Gets You Nowhere
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- Length: 3 hrs and 42 mins
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With Normal Gets You Nowhere, Kelly Cutrone invites us to get our freak on. History is full of successful, world-changing people who did not fit in. Think Nelson Mandela, Joan of Arc, Eleanor Roosevelt, Amelia Earhart, John Lennon, and Rosa Parks. Instead of changing themselves to accommodate the status quo or what others thought they should be, these people hung a light on their differences - and changed humanity in the process. “I know you don’t feel normal, so why are you trying to act it and prove to everyone you are?” Cutrone says.
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For open minds and hearts.
- By Kelly on 01-06-12
By: Kelly Cutrone
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Selfish, Shallow, and Self-Absorbed
- Sixteen Writers on the Decision Not to Have Kids
- By: Meghan Daum
- Narrated by: Johnny Heller, Jo Anna Perrin
- Length: 7 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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One of the main topics of cultural conversation during the last decade was the supposed "fertility crisis" and whether modern women could figure out a way to have it all - a successful, demanding career and the required 2.3 children - before their biological clocks stopped ticking. Now, however, conversation has turned to whether it's necessary to have it all (see Anne-Marie Slaughter) or, perhaps more controversial, whether children are really a requirement for a fulfilling life.
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Am I the only sane childfree woman in here?
- By J. Malouin on 09-29-15
By: Meghan Daum
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When They Call You a Terrorist
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- Unabridged
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When They Call You a Terrorist is the essential audiobook for every conscientious American. From one of the cofounders of the Black Lives Matter movement comes a poetic audiobook memoir and reflection on humanity. Necessary and timely, Patrisse Cullors' story asks us to remember that protest in the interest of the most vulnerable comes from love.
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Everyone should listen!
- By Mary J. Bunker on 01-26-18
By: Patrisse Cullors, and others
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To Obama
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- By: Jeanne Marie Laskas
- Narrated by: Jeanne Marie Laskas, Sullivan Jones, MacLeod Andrews, and others
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Every evening for eight years, at his request, President Obama was given 10 handpicked letters written by ordinary American citizens - the unfiltered voice of a nation - from his Office of Presidential Correspondence. He was the first president to interact daily with constituent mail and to archive it in its entirety. In To Obama, Jeanne Marie Laskas interviews President Obama, the letter writers themselves, and the White House staff who sifted through the powerful, moving, and incredibly intimate narrative of America during the Obama years:
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a must have audible book or print, it will amaze u
- By 1mercedeb8 on 11-08-18
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At the age of 20, Chris Gardner arrived in San Francisco to pursue a promising career in medicine. However, he surprised everyone and himself by setting his sights on the competitive world of high finance. Yet no sooner had he landed an entry-level position at a prestigious firm, Gardner found himself caught in a web of incredibly challenging circumstances that left him part of the city's working homeless with his toddler son.
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Very Good Story!
- By Lito Da Critic on 06-02-06
By: Chris Gardner
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Modern Loss
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At a time when we mourn public figures and national tragedies with hashtags, where intimate posts about loss go viral and we receive automated birthday reminders for dead friends, it's clear we are navigating new terrain without a road map. Let's face it: Most of us have always had a difficult time talking about death and sharing our grief. We're awkward and uncertain; we avoid, ignore, or even deny feelings of sadness; we offer platitudes; we send sympathy bouquets whittled out of fruit.
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Not What I Was Expecting
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It Was All a Dream
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Reniqua Allen tells the stories of Black millennials searching for a better future in spite of racist policies that have closed off traditional versions of success. Many watched their parents and grandparents play by the rules, only to sink deeper and deeper into debt. They witnessed their elders fight to escape cycles of oppression for more promising prospects, largely to no avail. Today, in this post-Obama era, they face a critical turning point. Interweaving her own experience, Allen shares surprising stories of hope and ingenuity.
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Great statistics and facts
- By Eve on 05-18-19
By: Reniqua Allen
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The Gift of Our Wounds
- A Sikh and a Former White Supremacist Find Forgiveness After Hate
- By: Pardeep Singh Kaleka, Arno Michaelis, Robin Gaby Fisher
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When white supremacist Wade Michael Page murdered six people and wounded four in a Sikh Temple in Wisconsin in 2012, Pardeep Kaleka was devastated. The temple leader, now dead, was his father. His family, who had immigrated to the US from India when Pardeep was young, had done everything right. Why was this happening to him? Arno Michaelis, a former skinhead and founder of one of the largest racist skinhead organizations in the world, knew he had to take action and fight against the very crimes he used to commit.
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The Gift
- By M. Forsberg on 07-29-22
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To the End of June
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Who are the children of foster care? What, as a country, do we owe them? Cris Beam, a foster mother herself, spent five years immersed in the world of foster care looking into these questions and tracing firsthand stories. The result is To the End of June, an unforgettable portrait that takes us deep inside the lives of foster children in their search for a stable, loving family. Beam shows us the intricacies of growing up in the system - the back-and-forth with agencies, the rootless shuffling between homes, the emotionally charged tug between foster and birth parents.
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Good dissertation
- By Nim on 03-13-19
By: Cris Beam
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The Meaning of Matthew
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The mother of Matthew Shepard shares her story about her son's death and the choice she made to become an international gay rights activist.
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Heart breaking story
- By sherry on 08-10-12
By: Judy Shepard
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What listeners say about Hillbilly Elegy
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Wayne
- 08-05-16
A great memoir by a 31 year old
Wikipedia defines elegy as, "In English literature, an elegy is a poem of serious reflection, typically a lament for the dead." Although this book is not a poem, it does involve serious reflection and it is a tribute to JD Vance's now dead hillbilly grandmother (mawmaw). It is also much, much more. Hillbilly Elegy is a touching true story of life growing up in the lower middle class communities of the mountains of southeastern Ohio and eastern Kentucky and escaping that area and the often destructive culture of drugs, alcohol, violence, early marriage and parenthood, and divorce. It is also a story of luck, good fortune, and personal strength that allowed a poor student not only escape but graduate from Yale law school.
Vance says that he is 'the luckiest son-of-a-bitch in the world", a title I often claim myself. He deserves it more! I'm 42 years older than him and was born into the equivalent culture of the time in the rural US south. But I was born early enough not to experience the further degradation of the culture that came with drugs, family breakdown, and the availability of government money that stifles the desire to escape by moving people from being in genuine poverty to being lower middle class.
The individual stories of Vance's mom, sister, pawpaw, and others, but especially of his grandmother who raised him are often frightening and just as often heart warming. Vance paints a vivid portrait of a time and a place that is depressing and yet typical of how people there live. As he says, most people in the US look dawn at the people trapped, often by their own choices, in an environment where the jobs are gone but the inducements to try to escape are no longer present.
Vance does an excellent job of narrating his own book. Another narrator could no have reflected the emotion as well as he. This is a must listen audiobook.
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192 people found this helpful
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- Eivind
- 08-04-16
A must read book describing present US challenges
J.D. Vance does an excellent job of describing the challenges now confronting many Americans and a thoughtful job of identifying the obstacles that often get in the way of those Americans dealing with those challenges in a positive manner. This is the memior of a young man who comes of age with the help of family, friends, the Marines, and true mentors and who beats the odds that were stacked against him.
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14 people found this helpful
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- Jean
- 12-12-16
Compelling
I spent some time deciding whether or not to read this book. Vance writes about growing up in eastern Kentucky. In many ways, it is a sad story of people not adapting to changes in society and industries. This story was more dramatic during the industrial revolution but is constantly ongoing.
Vance tells of his mother’s alcohol and drug addiction and hopelessness. He discusses the big problem of domestic violence. He was very lucky to have had his grandmother to help him. Vance tells of how he got out of the Appalachia area by joining the military and getting an education. He tells of obtaining his law degree from Yale University and moving to the West coast.
The book is well written and Vance does an excellent job in revealing the toxic culture of the Appalachian area. This class culture divide is a big problem for America. I was most interested in his conclusion and suggestion to correct this problem. After reading his analysis I agree with him that the Scot/Irish hillbillies are the only ones that can solve these problems and I sure hope they will.
Vance does a good job narrating his own book.
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- Carla Adwell Webb
- 03-31-18
Elegy vs Eulogy
This mournful poem/story about the life of a Hillbilly boy touched my heart and made me realize that while I grew up in a different location and circumstances, many of my family rituals were the same. His insights into the realities of poverty and honor are profound. The blessings of family who, crazy as they act, do not give up on each other, are recognized as life saving. Governments cannot save us. We save us. Thanks JD for this insightful piece of loving work.
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- Chiefkent
- 10-24-16
God, I Hope Hillary Has Read This!
Hillbilly Elegy is on of the most erudite and insightful examinations of modern American society ever written. Statistics can't begin to explain cause and effect the way young Mr. Vance has. This book ought to be given to all members of Congress to read, as well as every state legislator, social worker and anyone else involved with policy or implementation of our nation's social "safety net".
Both political parties have conspired through ignorance and apathy, to disfranchise from the American Dream a significant portion of the population through dogmatic social and educational legislation. There are no easy solutions, but the complex causations must be identified first before we can even begin. The generational gap only increases as both parties gridlock over stagnant ideologies while pointing fingers.
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- G. Roukas
- 08-31-16
Compelling and informative
Vance's story is very well written; it drew me through every page and kept my attention throughout. Trust me: that's no easy feat! In the context of his memoir, it sheds light on the things that hold back the people near where he grew up and helps to explain why poverty in Appalachia is so stubborn. In effect, it has to be fixed from within.
As I read, though, I trained this isn't a book just about hillbillies alone because the principles he describes manifest everywhere. Apparently there are hillbilly effects all over the US, and probably the world. It's an elegy for us all, to varying degrees of concentration.
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- Shawn H.
- 09-06-16
eye opening!
I laughed, cried and giggled my way through this book, thank you JD! as the granddaughter of an Appalachian mamaw and papaw, I could absolutely relate to your life, with some differences here and there, it would seem we grew up in the same family. Here's to our beloved grandparents, who kept us all in line, as well as the "other" folks in our family who taught us many things, both good and some bad. I wouldn't change much.
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- Anonymous User
- 07-12-24
Emotionally Truthful
The author captured the honesty and true grit it took for people who lived in families that were undereducated and strived for nothing more, to go to college and attain an entirely new life. Those who moved on were caught between feeling proud of their success while at the same time feeling like they had deserted many of their family and friends.
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- Julie S
- 08-01-16
Not Just In Kentucky
This book gave me a better understanding of my relatives lives, and they are caucasians from a poor area in California. Thank you for the honest reflection- I believe it starts an important dialogue
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- Ginger
- 07-11-17
Nailed it
I loved this analogy and cried as well, I am 57 and I to am a hill person, sometimes I dream of moving back. Married and divorced 4 times - no diagnosed or problems from drugs or alcohol.... just lots
Of the behaviors- thank you and god bless
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