I just finished reading Hillbilly Elegy by J.D. Vance. I always know it's a good book when I can't stop thinking about it once it's finished. To give you a summary of the book, here is the information on the book jacket cover:
Hillbilly Elegy is a passionate and personal analysis of a culture in crisis-- that of poor, white Americans. The disintegration of this group, a process that has been slowly occurring now for over forty years, has been reported with growing frequency and alarm, but has never before been written about as searingly from the inside. In Hillbilly Elegy, J.D. Vance tells the true story of what a social, regional, and class decline feels like when you were born with it hanging around your neck.
The Vance family story began with hope in post-war America. J.D.'s grandparents were "dirt poor and in love" and moved to Ohio in the hopes of escaping the dreadful poverty around them. They raised a middle-class family, and eventually one of their grandchildren would graduate from Yale Law School, a conventional marker of success in achieving generational upward mobility. But as the family saga of Hillbilly Elegy plays out, we learn that J.D.'s grandparents, aunt, uncle, sister, and most of all, his mother struggled profoundly with the demands of their new middle-class life, never fully escaping the legacy of abuse, alcoholism, poverty, and trauma so characteristic of their part of America. With piercing honesty, Vance shows how he himself still carries around the demons of his chaotic history.
A deeply moving memoir, with its share of humor and colorful figures, Hillbilly Elegy is the story of how upward mobility feels. And it is an urgent and troubling meditation on the loss of the American dream for a large segment of this country.
I can't recommend this book highly enough. Everyone who teaches school in our area should read this book in order to get just a glimpse of what some of their students go through on a daily basis and the effect it has on them. I wish I could have read it when I was teaching fourth grade years ago. Even though I was somewhat aware of the lives some of my students led, this inside look would certainly have added to my empathy for some of my toughest kids. Even as a teacher of gifted children, I had extremely bright students who were coming from homes very similar to what J.D. described. Some of them made it into the middle class. Others did not.
Phil and I have recently been trained as volunteers in a juvenile court system program called CASA, court appointed special advocates. In this program we are assigned children who are under the Department of Children's Services (DCS) protection. Our role is to sort through all of the people involved in the child's life and advocate for a permanent placement that we believe will be in the best interest of the child. The goal is to stay with this child throughout the time they are under DCS supervision in order to make sure the child doesn't fall through the cracks and get lost in the system.
Part of our training involved spending several hours observing juvenile court. It has been quite an education, and in this setting we have observed many families who look like the family in this book. It is easy for people in the courts (and teachers) to grow cynical in helping these families, but this book makes it clear how the system continually stacks the deck against these people. So Phil and I hope that we can interact with the people we come in contact with in such a way that we give them hope and a chance to make it out of the troubled situation that has brought them to court. We want to think that anyone we meet might be a possible J.D.
The author makes a couple of other important points. He firmly believes that blaming the system will never get you anywhere in life. Everyone makes choices, and the consequences of those choices are the things that make our life what it is, good or bad. J.D. also says that along the way he had key people in his life who made it possible for him to survive, and eventually, to thrive in the life that he has made for himself. His story made me very aware of the difference one person can make in a child's life.
Another thought that I took away from Hillbilly Elegy is how fortunate I am that this is not my family's story. My grandfather grew up in Kentucky and raised his kids there. All of them left Kentucky just as J.D.'s grandparents and parents did and made it successfully into the middle class. Many of my cousins are college graduates and have great careers. But my family was not dysfunctional like J.D.'s, and I will always know that to their faith in God and their decision to live according to biblical principles played a part in their success.
Hillbilly Elegy gave me lots of insight, and I continue to think about the things I learned. I hope many of you will check it out because, if you live here in Dunlap, there are people all around you who are struggling, and they need your empathy and understanding if there is going to be any hope of turning their lives around.
(If you're a person who is bothered by bad language, this may not be the book for you. Mamaw Vance cusses like a sailor.)
Phil and I have recently been trained as volunteers in a juvenile court system program called CASA, court appointed special advocates. In this program we are assigned children who are under the Department of Children's Services (DCS) protection. Our role is to sort through all of the people involved in the child's life and advocate for a permanent placement that we believe will be in the best interest of the child. The goal is to stay with this child throughout the time they are under DCS supervision in order to make sure the child doesn't fall through the cracks and get lost in the system.
Part of our training involved spending several hours observing juvenile court. It has been quite an education, and in this setting we have observed many families who look like the family in this book. It is easy for people in the courts (and teachers) to grow cynical in helping these families, but this book makes it clear how the system continually stacks the deck against these people. So Phil and I hope that we can interact with the people we come in contact with in such a way that we give them hope and a chance to make it out of the troubled situation that has brought them to court. We want to think that anyone we meet might be a possible J.D.
The author makes a couple of other important points. He firmly believes that blaming the system will never get you anywhere in life. Everyone makes choices, and the consequences of those choices are the things that make our life what it is, good or bad. J.D. also says that along the way he had key people in his life who made it possible for him to survive, and eventually, to thrive in the life that he has made for himself. His story made me very aware of the difference one person can make in a child's life.
Another thought that I took away from Hillbilly Elegy is how fortunate I am that this is not my family's story. My grandfather grew up in Kentucky and raised his kids there. All of them left Kentucky just as J.D.'s grandparents and parents did and made it successfully into the middle class. Many of my cousins are college graduates and have great careers. But my family was not dysfunctional like J.D.'s, and I will always know that to their faith in God and their decision to live according to biblical principles played a part in their success.
Hillbilly Elegy gave me lots of insight, and I continue to think about the things I learned. I hope many of you will check it out because, if you live here in Dunlap, there are people all around you who are struggling, and they need your empathy and understanding if there is going to be any hope of turning their lives around.
(If you're a person who is bothered by bad language, this may not be the book for you. Mamaw Vance cusses like a sailor.)
