. Instaread - Summary of Hillbilly Elegy: by J.D. Vance

Guide to

J.D. Vances

Hillbilly Elegy

A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis

by

Instaread

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Table of Contents

Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis by JD Vance is an account of the struggles of white working-class Americans in the post-industrial United States. The author offers a message of hope by telling the story of how he went from growing up poor in Ohios Rust Belt to graduating from Yale Law School.

James David (JD) Vances family is of Scots-Irish descent. His people have a long history of enduring poverty and hardship. Since the eighteenth century in the United States, the Scots-Irish have been plantation workers, sharecroppers, miners, and factory and millworkers. Many settled or have roots in Appalachia. Other Americans sometimes consider JDs people hillbillies, rednecks, or white trash. [1] As industrial manufacturing has declined in recent decades, hillbillies have been hit especially hard.

JD was born in Middletown, Ohio, but his first real home was with his grandparents in Jackson, Kentucky, at the center of Appalachian coal country. JD spent summers and other times there with his family until he was 12. In Jackson, JD was proud to be the grandson of the best mechanic in town, his Papaw, and a tough lady named Bonnie Vance, his Mamaw. When she was a little girl, Mamaw shot a man and nearly killed him for trying to run off with her familys cow.

Mamaw married Jim Vance, whom JD calls Papaw, in 1947 when she was only 14. Papaw got Mamaw pregnant so the two had a shotgun wedding and took off for Ohio, where there was promise of finding a job in a growing industrial sector. Even though Mamaw and Papaws child died within a week of being born, the couple settled in Middletown. Papaw got a job at the steel company Armco, which actively recruited workers from Appalachia.

Mamaw and Papaw had three kids: JDs mother Bev, her brother Jimmy, and her sister Lori, whom he calls Aunt Wee. Mamaw miscarried a number of times along the way. They were not a happy family. Papaw developed a drinking problem and Mamaw became a recluse hoarding garbage in the house. They fought constantly. Sometimes it became violent. One night when Papaw came home drunk, Mamaw doused him with gasoline and lit a match. Fortunately, one of the girls came to Papaws rescue and put out the fire. Eventually Papaw quit drinking, and he and Mamaw reconciled.

Bev became pregnant when she was 18 and married her boyfriend. Shortly after, they divorced and she became the single mother of Lindsay, JDs older half-sister. About five years later, in 1984, Bev had JD.

JDs childhood was tumultuous. When he was in kindergarten, his biological father, Don Bowman, gave him up for adoption. Bevs new husband, Bob Hamel, became JDs adoptive father.

JD saw Mamaw and Papaw every day. They became one of the only constants in his life. Bev, on the other hand, was a loose cannon. When JD was nine, Bev and Bob decided to move with the kids to Preble County, 35 miles away from Middletown. There JD struggled in school and gained weight, likely because of the stress he experienced as a result of his parents constant fighting. When JD was 11, Bev attempted suicide by crashing her car. Not long after, they moved back to Middletown without Bob.

Things didnt get much better. Bev began abusing alcohol and became even more unpredictable. One time, she got angry while driving with JD, sped up, and threatened to crash the car and kill them both. When Bev finally pulled over, JD jumped out and ran to a nearby house where he begged the residents to call Mamaw. Bev chased JD to the house, broke down the door, and dragged him out. The police showed up and arrested her.

In court, JD didnt confess that Bev had threatened him. Mamaw and Papaw had instructed him not to because they didnt want Bev to go to jail. As part of an informal family agreement, JD got to live with Mamaw and Papaw from that point forward. Hillbilly justice had been served.

With Bob no longer in his life, JD decided to get back in touch with Don, his biological father. Don lived in Kentucky with his wife, Cheryl, and kids. JD began to adopt Dons evangelical faith. Eventually Dons faith, which vigorously condemned mainstream music and homosexuality among other cultural crusades, made JD feel cut off from the outside world and the culture he knew in white working-class Kentucky. His grandparents identified as religious but not as evangelical culture warriors.

When JD was 13, Papaw passed away. JD remembered Papaw teaching him to shoot a BB gun and helping him with his math homework. At Papaws funeral, JD realized that Papaw had always been the best dad he could have asked for.

Papaws death was hard on everyone. One day JD found Bev screaming at her boyfriend Matt and Lindsay in the yard. Bev had tried to slit her wrists. It turned out that she had been abusing prescription narcotics, which shed been stealing from the hospital where she worked as an ER nurse. So Bev went to rehab, and JD and Lindsay lived in Bevs house by themselves. Lindsay was not yet 18.

After several months, Bev returned home. Lindsay married her boyfriend Kevin and less than a year later they had a child, Kameron. Then Bev took JD away from Middletown again to live with her and Matt in Dayton, and then with another boyfriend, Ken, in Miamisburg. Unhappy and failing school, JD started drinking and smoking pot.

In his sophomore year of high school, after Bevs relationship with Ken fell apart, JD returned to Middletown to live with Mamaw for good. His new stable home life helped him to excel in school and even test into advanced math. Eventually he took the SAT, graduated, and made plans to attend Ohio State.

But JD didnt feel ready for college. Only a year after 9/11, JD was as excited as any hillbilly about the prospect of fighting terrorists in the Middle East. So he joined the Marines. For JD, boot camp was exacting and transformative. It made him move from feeling helpless in his life to realizing the power of his own will.

Not long after, Mamaw became ill. Two weeks after her 72nd birthday in April 2005, Mamaws lung collapsed and she went into a coma. JD rushed home from his post in North Carolina to join Lindsay, Bev, and Aunt Wee at Mamaws bedside. She passed away shortly after.

JDs unit was deployed to Iraq. While serving in the military, JD became a man. He learned how to take care of himself, think strategically, lead, and work with people from all different social classes and racial backgrounds.

In fall 2007, after completing his service, JD started college at Ohio State. His time in the Marines led him to feel invincible while in the comparatively tame environment of college. But it also led him to overwork himself and drink too much. JD came down with both mono and a staph infection, which landed him in the hospital. Despite all, he earned all As while juggling multiple jobs. In his second year of school, JD became anxious to finish his bachelors degree. So he plowed ahead tackling a double course load and sleeping less than four hours a night. In August 2009, in just under two years, JD graduated with a double major summa cum laude.