
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
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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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.
A great memoir by a 31 year old
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My one reservation: the author reads with perhaps more authenticity than a professional narrator might have... But why didn't the director insist that he slow down? He rushes through larger words so fast that syllables get left out and the meaning of the sentence sometimes gets jumbled. Even a high school drama or speech teacher tells students to slooow dowwnnn. Some poignant moments and punchlines do not receive the thoughtful pacing or timing they deserved.
May be better read in hard copy
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A must read book describing present US challenges
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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.
Compelling
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Elegy vs Eulogy
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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.
God, I Hope Hillary Has Read This!
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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.
Compelling and informative
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eye opening!
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Emotionally Truthful
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Not Just In Kentucky
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