Hillbilly Elegy...

 I'm having Thoughts about Hillbilly Elegy, a book I just listened to because of a book challenge. 

I'm late to the party on this one, as it came out in 2016 and was a best-seller and had a lot of nominations for things.

Given that, I've heard both praise and criticism of the book. That, and Vance now has a political career and has done a 180 on many things he previously stated. 

I'm not going to review this based on his political career, or the politicians he now supports. (One that he once criticized, apparently.)

I should note, that I listened to the audiobook. And I listened to it right after finishing Maid: Hard Work, Low Pay, and a Mother's Will to Survive by Land.

All in all, this book felt overhyped. 

This book brings up a lot of problems in a growing segment of society, but offers very few solutions other than have a person in your life that believes in you, believe in your country as the greatest in the world, find god, join the marines, and work hard. Not necessarily in that order. 

I'm glad this worked for him.

First off, I should say that Vance did not have an easy childhood. That should be acknowledged. He did not have a great childhood. Even those that offered him sanctuary - his grandparents - have some major flaws. However, they had a lot fewer flaws by the time they raised Vance than when they raised their own children, as often happens. Not always, but often.

Something that bothers me about the book, though, is the Vance brings up a lot of things (consumerism in the poor, drug use, not knowing how to balance a checkbook, not knowing about comparing banks/checking different places for loans) and doesn't connect them, instead of chalking things up to "hopelessness" and not believing in your country. If he had to join the marines to learn things that many of us consider basic, where does he expect his fellow hillbillies to learn it? He doesn't link the idea of buying things to feel something, or the idea of buying being an addiction like the many others that are problematic in his home. 

I give him credit for some things. He knew he wasn't ready for college/university. However, joining the marines isn't something that everyone can do. 

Now, I get that he isn't a sociologist. He's not a social worker. This book, I think, would have benefited from an additional look at things from these angles. Someone who would be able to make some connections between having nothing to do but fuck, fight, and drink with a highly dysfunctional society where people have nothing to look forward to. 

There's also a disconnect to me, as a woman, with the lack of understanding what traps the women there. Why they get knocked up so young, and how that traps them in these situations. It's hard to not compare this book with Maid, because we saw a similar society from the POV of a woman trying to get out of that hopeless cycle. For both of them, education was the answer. Higher education offered them a path to a better life. I know this isn't always the case, but it was in these two books.

One of the other things about this book that bother me is the use of data, and the lack of data usage. Vance uses some research when he remembers it, or so it feels. Other times, he ignores something that would be easy to look up (the myth of the welfare queen, food stamp fraud, how payday loans negatively impact people - including the military) and instead uses first hand experience as a counter. As if what he observed is somehow the same as research that encompasses years, thousands of people, and the educated expertise of the researchers in favor of his very limited data. I'm sure he'd point out his one [descriptor] friend as an example that not all [descriptor] people feel that way. 

I understand that this is a memoir, it says so on the subtitle. I wish the elegy part was better addresses, as it's in the main title, and that the tie into the death of the culture was also better addressed. I guess I wished for more, and better.