Hillbilly elegy a memoir of a family and culture in crisis Cover Image

Hillbilly elegy [large print] : a memoir of a family and culture in crisis / by J. D. Vance.

ISBN: 141049666X
ISBN: 9781410496669
Physical Description: 381 pages (large print) ; 23 cm.
Edition: Large print edition.
Publisher: Waterville, Maine : Thorndike Press, 2017.
Copyright: &copy;2016

Summary:

Vance's grandparents were "dirt poor and in love." They got married and moved north from Kentucky to Ohio in the hopes of escaping the dreadful poverty around them. Their grandchild (the author) graduated from Yale Law School, a conventional marker of their success in achieving upward mobility for their family. But Vance cautions that is only the short version. The slightly longer version is that his grandparents, aunt, uncle, and mother struggled to varying degrees with the demands of their new middle class life and they, and Vance himself, still carry around the demons of their chaotic family history.<p>Delving into his own personal story and drawing on a wide array of sociological studies, Vance takes us deep into working class life in the Appalachian region. This demographic of our country has been slowly disintegrating over forty years, and Vance provides a searching and clear-eyed attempt to understand when and how "hillbillies" lost faith in any hope of upward mobility, and in opportunities to come.