Hillbilly Elegy / Where the Crawdads Sing by J.D. Vance

Hillbilly Elegy / Where the Crawdads Sing Reviews

• 
  Mirjam

  Two bad apples... you know how the saying goes.
• 
  Mark

  Only read Hillbilly Elegy, but Goodreads won't let me post a review on the normal page so I'm posting it here instead.
  
  In the middle of July this summer I went out on a hike with a friend. When we were coming back to town, we decided to go visit the local Baptist church downtown, which looks somewhat like a castle. When we got inside, we heard the pastor call out to us, so we went into his study. After 2.5 hours, we finally left his study. The vast majority of that time was spent by him telling us stories, and he only got our names at the very end. This poor man lost his wife a year or so ago, and seemed extremely lonely, like he needed to speak (and word-vomit and overshare and ramble). Most of his stories included violence, almost always as a "punch line" (I guess that the stories were supposed to be funny? They were more sad than anything). My friend and I walked away dazed and confused, because he didn't let us get a word in. We both were too nice to interrupt him or tell him we were uncomfortable or to tell him we wanted to leave. Both of us came from stable, boring homes, whereas this guy had to be the adult in his home.
  
  I thought often about this Baptist pastor while listening to Vance read his book. There were many parallels, especially the violence and the late-life religiosity. However, a couple major differences showed up. First off, that pastor was exceptionally unaware of himself and of others. Vance from the outset attempts to add nuance to his story and its political dimensions, though like any politician he falls into cliches and ruts when he gets tired. He used cringe-worthy terms like "welfare queen," but you can tell he at least has some sort of race-consciousness, and he definitely has class-consciousness. That's an interesting parallel between him and Tucker Carlson, who, in their populist bent, sometimes accidentally sound revolutionary. At one point Vance remarked upon how the manufacturing companies used to take care of many of these smaller towns, but eventually their relationship broke apart with the workers. Without saying it explicitly, it sounded like he was hinting at the importance of worker rights/advocacy and the ability to unionize, but he never made that explicit. I'd like that to be the case, but this might just be me projecting my hopes onto him.
  
  The other important difference was how they handled the violence they experienced. The Baptist pastor only remarked "Things have changed so much since I was a kid! You guys are living in a totally different world!" He didn't understand why it had changed, but he noticed it had. He didn't have anything to add to that, didn't condemn all the violence enacted on him nor by him on others. I was very worried Vance would do the same, because his book starts off extremely violently. I've seen so much tripe in recent years from supposed conservatives who make ghoulish allusions to mob/vigilante justice (e.g. "Try That in a Small Town"), and it really pisses me off. Despite claiming to "Back the Blue," many conservatives are too stupid to notice their threats of violence against others more than slightly undermine the rule of law. Vance, however, showed by the end of the book that his relationship with his now-wife was a major reason he learned how to act in civil society, rather than the eye-for-an-eye, hair-trigger stupidity of his upbringing.
  
  One thing that Vance made explicit (which the pastor we talked to definitely didn't) was that he and some of his biggest role models have TWO gods: God and Country. The fact that he said this with no hint of irony was honestly disturbing to me, since at some point you'll have to choose between the two, and I doubt he's going to choose Christlike kindness over and against politically expedient jingoism. Both Vance and the pastor were veterans, but I doubt the pastor even was aware of how idolatrous it is to have more pro-America iconography than Christian iconography in your office. Whatever.
  
  Either way, Vance isn't some evil monster summoned from the bog, he's a Yale-educated conservative populist who grew up in poverty and a broken home but has managed to escape that. He is largely a product of his environment, and he admits that. Interestingly, he credits his success almost entirely to the support he received outside of the nuclear family, especially his grandma. He made it clear that for him (and many other poor folks), the nuclear family is too small and volatile of a unit to be the sole safety net between children and the foster system. This somewhat undermines the hyperbolic (non)conversation around the topic, but it was nice to hear a white conservative guy say it, since from anyone else, most people wouldn't listen.
  
  For the most part it was an engaging narrative, but at a few points (especially at the start) I got lost in a maze of names and family relations. I would assume the book was at least partially ghost-written, as some parts felt a bit more flowery than others, but overall it held together. I think an important thing for everyone (especially for traumatized people) is to construct your own mythology, to tell the story of your past. Of course there are things he chose to leave out, but so is the case when we introduce ourselves to others. We give the highlights then move on. But the empowering thing is that we get to tell the story, we get to decide what is important, and that in turn shapes how we see both the past and the future. If there's any lesson to be taken from his narrative, it's something like that: we shouldn't run away from conflict, but we should integrate it into our story and come to terms with it. This is what some of the writers of the best (in my opinion) books of the bible did: they processed intense personal and civilizational trauma (especially Ezekiel, Lamentations, Jeremiah, etc.). This isn't to reduce those books of the bible to mere diary entries or manic ramblings, but it does help draw a through line from ancient times to modern. We all need help processing the undifferentiated stream of events which experience, and that's precisely what a good narrative does.
• 
  Rebekah Tarry

  Didn’t put it down from cover to cover!
  
  Started reading at midnight and finished at 3am, beautifully written and thought provoking especially around trust and isolation.
  
  The shifting of years throughout makes for a compelling read as you feel the timelines coming together and a paints a protagonist you can’t help but root for and relate to.
  
  Couldn’t recommend it more
• 
  Malorie Shmyr

  This book was so incredible. I can’t recommend it more.
• 
  Nyla Upal

  They're not letting me review the actual Hillbilly Elegy so I'm putting my review here :( I have not read Where the Crawdads Sing, actual review is 2 stars but I don't wanna do that cause I haven't actually read the other book
  Y'know, I read this book so I could psychoanalyze this guy, but unfortunately I didn't study with freud so I think I'm not yet qualified to do that. But also, so much of what he's done after this book is so strange and contradictory, and like also harmful.
  As a book, I think he had a difficult life story, he makes some fair points about how the government systems didn't know how to deal with his situation and the interventions often handled it the wrong way and put him in an even more difficult situation, which I do think is an important perspective to consider and learn about. However maybe it isn't the only perspective on all Appalachian life. He also then uses this experience to justify a lot of conservative beliefs and the logical jumps he makes don't always track in my opinion. And then in real life he uses the fact that he had a difficult life to justify like... everything and a lot of his policies and beliefs that are harmful to... people in those difficult situations. And (here's old sigmund) like you can see how his views on the influential women in his life influence how he thinks all women should live but again, not everything is the same as your experience. In his story it seems he's still really upset about a lot of this stuff, and at the end he talks about how he's still working through it all, so do I even trust his conclusions?
  He also really emphasizes how he is trying to explain the mindset of the Appalachian hillbillies, despite growing up in Ohio... But who am I to know about Appalachia. Another problem is he generalizes his experience to everything, and because his book is trying to explain a certain way of life he uses his life experience and just talks about how everything is just like his experiences. Like because he saw this in the grocery store it means this is how all of Appalachia thinks. But I also feel like just cause you were raised with this mindset doesn't mean you... can't change... Like y'know, you can explain it without justifying it... And just cause you had these personal experiences and can back it up with some studies (even though there are also opposing studies) doesn't mean it's like... applicable to national policies. And in a lot of cases he ignores the larger problems and just blames individuals (and now immigrants?? instead of corporations) for their problems.
  The book discusses a lot about politics, and his approach to race is very much in the "I don't see color" mindset, which really annoyed me. He tries to justify why people accusing Obama of having "ties to Islamic extremists" isn't racist because... Obama is so different from them and he went to an Ivy League and is rich (which I guess is a fair point he talks about, a lot of people feel disconnected from rich politicians who don't really know real people)... but you wouldn't just call any politician muslim just because you don't like them... like the fact that Obama is black does play some influence there...
  He also compares a lot how the hillbilly experience is a lot like poor people of color... which I'm not exactly sure is true. He tries to make a lot of assertions just because he had one personal experience... like because he was nice to a guy in Iraq, nobody can criticize the marines. Because he read one article about it, Christians are being persecuted in America. And then he also just randomly goes on about gay people sometimes for some reason?
  So basically I read this book in hopes that I would actually understand this Appalachian mindset and to be honest I understand no more than I did before reading (maybe a little, but I also don't trust him as a narrator to be educating me cause he's also just being kinda condescending. If anything he made me realize I have to hear someone elses account on this). Like admittedly, he suffered through a lot of unfortunate circumstances that I'm sure have befallen many people who have had unstable homes and addiction in the family and grew up in these areas, and I guess I grew up with privilege and didn't have to be faced with any of these problems, but I still don't track the way he uses that to jump to the beliefs in the end. And also unsure why they made a movie about this that was just a poor people sob story. Anyways, what I'm saying is, goodreads let me review this book please, and put me in Kamala.
• 
  Laurie

  Goodreads wouldn't let me rate or review Hillbilly Elegy. Where the Crawdads Sing was a DNF for me. I watched the movie instead.
  
  So since I can't review Hillbilly Elegy, I'll post my comments here:
  
  "Hillbilly justice"
  "Gun toting hillbillies"
  "Can go from zero to murderous in a f*cking heartbeat"
  
  "Many in the white working class think the worst of their society."
  
  "If a third of our community questions the president's origins (Obama) despite all evidence to the contrary, it's a good bet that the other conspiracies have broader currency than we would like."
  
  Many believe the conspiracy theories and misinformation on the internet.
  "It's becoming more and more mainstream."
  
  "The message of the right is increasingly - it's not your fault that you're a loser it's the government's fault."
  
  The fact that he got away from his dysfunctional home life seems like the exception instead of the rule.
  
  Yes he worked hard but took advantage of government programs and college scholarships that were available to him for being so poor.
  
  He comes off as judgmental of the people, his people, who were not able to pull themselves out of poverty like he did. Although he had many disadvantages he also had many advantages. Not everyone has such awesome grandparents and an aunt and a biological father that were there for him when his mother could not/would not be. Judging others for not being able to become rich and successful like him doesn't seem fair.
• 
  Sarah

  Just read the Elegy, but couldn't review it for some odd reason, so this is me adding it to my book challenge of the year in the hopes I can fix it later. :)
  
  I liked the book, but the language was jarring. It's not something I would recommend to my circle just because of the more conservative values they hold, but I would also say they would be missing a great read.
  
  Not great because the story is great (the story is tragic with bits of hope, but honestly raw and heartbreaking) but because it points to a systemic issue of poverty mindset in certain American demographics. It points to abuse and family dysfunction that comes out of ignorance and a hopeless mindset of depression and despair. Vance's story is the story of many people in these subcultures and it's SO painful to read about it. That it's considered a "norm" is absolutely horrifying and he was right to say that the struggle to counter that in our adult lives after having lived through that childhood trauma is ongoing and so exhausting on body and soul.
• 
  Talor North

  Goodreads has blocked being able to review Hillbilly Elegy (I wonder why 😂) but I had to get my thoughts down before they faded, so I found a workaround. And it feels like divine timing because I did just read Where the Crawdads Sing and these two books blend so well together.
  Politics aside, Hillbilly Elegy hit me in a way I didn’t expect. I expected to be reading a memoir about a politician—I did not expect to fall so in love with the family that I shed tears over their deaths, their mistakes, and their resilience.
  It’s an incredible view into another person’s life and it gives voice to a different perspective that is often overlooked and unheard.
  Hillbilly Elegy is well written book that had me hooked from the very first paragraph, and I don’t think I can convey how deeply I felt the pain and heartache of this family. I’m glad to have read it!
• 
  Bree Glasbergen

  Someone close to me asked me to catagorise this book and I couldn't. Its in a league of its own. 10/10 would read again.
• 
  Amelia Mann

  Beautiful book, fell in love with Kya! Loved the story and the ending was perfect!