Beyond Hypocrisy: The Utility of JD Vance’s Hillbilly Elegy

In the midst of the upcoming election, the name JD Vance holds more controversial connotations than ever. To many, including myself, he represents a hypocrite who went from labeling Donald Trump as “cultural heroin” to being his vice-president nominee. Yet, before he exhibited these perfidious values, he wrote a best-selling memoir, “Hillbilly Elegy.” To many, rural people are homogenous, uneducated, lazy people who are the impetus behind their own demise — they are suffering from self-imposed and thus deserved problems. To be rural is to be dumb. To be rural is to be simple. To be rural is to be hateful. Vance wrote “Hillbilly Elegy” to combat these misconceptions and did so by telling his own family story, a story that has many intersections with my own. I did not want to enjoy “Hillbilly Elegy.” I even found myself reluctant to accept that Vance related to me in any way considering his current image. Yet, many Americans share the same heritage, struggles, and experiences that Vance depicts in his memoir, and, aside from his now ill-held values, it effectively illustrates the problems and values that imbue rural America.

My grandfather cannot read. My grandmother grew up picking cotton to help sustain her family. My parents were first-generation college students. These are rural struggles, at least in how they pertain to me. But this is no single story — industrial jobs, poverty, and a tumultuous childhood are characteristic of many tales of a rural upbringing, including that of Vance. Vance was reared in the small industrial town of Middletown, Ohio, but spent lots of his time in Jackson, Kentucky — the place his family migrated north from in search of labor. Amongst these two places, he experienced a multitude of obstacles throughout his childhood, including physical abuse, poverty, substance use, and broad instability. Yet, within these struggles was the “hillbilly” experience that permeated every facet of his life and is functionally what aided in his success. Vance brings forth the problems of rurality in America, but he also elucidates the advantages, something that nowadays is far too ignored.

Although he admits that there are flaws, Vance also acknowledges the redeeming quality rurality possesses: its attitude. An attitude where you treat others how you would wish to be treated. An attitude where you would give the shirt off your back to your neighbor because you know that, in the long run, they would do the same for you. That is rurality. And it exists in this way because rural people realize that they all share the collective goal of making life better. Whether that be for themselves, their children, or some stranger they’ve never met, rurality is built on this principle. Vance makes this clear, emphasizing throughout the memoir that his family helped not only each other, but others. He speaks of an “Appalachian code” that encompassed the values all Appalachians, and broadly rural people, held. Within this code is loyalty and respect, qualities that are often glossed over in exposés of rurality, yet are things I often observe in my day-to-day life.

Back home in the Midwest, I quite frequently find myself at a quaint farm diner called Nice’s. It is unlike the cafes and restaurants that occupy the East Coast; it is a place of palpable charm where you drink sweet tea and can eat a hearty meal for five dollars. Once, while dining at Nice’s, I saw a man saunter through the door wearing denim overalls and an American flag hat. With him was a Hispanic man with a look of bewilderment; that look someone wears when they are in a strange place among strange people. To many, these two men represented two diametrically opposed groups that, in our country, are constantly at odds. Yet, the two men sat down at a table and immediately began to converse — or at least attempted to. The Hispanic man knew no English, and so, the man opposite him began to utilize Google Translate. He began showing him pictures of his family. They began to joke and laugh. Later, I went over to converse with the man in Spanish — not because someone told me to or that it was expected, but for the same reason that compelled that other man to treat his companion with such respect, and the same reason that governed many of Vance’s actions throughout his memoir: it is the rural way.

It is evident there is hate in rural places. There is racism, there is homophobia — among a host of other things. Yet, there is also respect, and far too often do we forget that; we have begun to exclude stories like that of the two men in the cafe. Too frequently do we demonize communities for the qualities of some, instead of considering the qualities of all. We have begun to abandon nuance. We are always taught not to judge a book by its cover, not to draw conclusions based on someone’s appearance, nor their class or accent. Yet, often, we excuse this rule when it comes to a group that we deem as largely problematic: i.e., the racist-hateful-dumb-hillbillies. Is rurality flawed? Yes. Does that statement inherently mean every member of a rural community is problematic? No. The beauty of Vance’s memoir is that it does not try to explain problems that it cannot. It does not propose a solution to the racism of America, it does not assert how we could normalize queer people in the country, or really how to fix the problems with rurality — it leaves that quite open-ended. What it does do, is point out not only the genuine problems with rural America, but the things we should celebrate. The loyalty, the respect, the hard work. Things that are too often dismissed.

Often while reading “Hillbilly Elegy,” I wondered how such an eloquent book could be written by such a hate-mongering, inauthentic person, who now struggles to appear down-to-earth. And, sometimes, I still wonder that. Yet, from 2016 to now, the memoir has not changed — unlike Vance himself. It still addresses the problems I observed growing up. It still highlights the positive qualities of rural people that are often ignored. It still tells a rural story. That is its utility. The book deserves attention not to solve some problem, and not even to try and explain to urban-dwelling liberals what a “hillbilly” is, but really to provide a painfully accurate description of the happenings that pervade rural America. Vance no longer has my respect, but his memoir always will.