Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture

Vance begins his memoir with a conceit, terming “the existence of the book you hold in your hands is somewhat absurd” (1). He deems the “coolest thing [he has] done…is graduate from Yale Law School,” and that all he has achieved is “quite ordinary,” but “doesn’t happen to most kids who grow up” as he did (1). Vance gives some background on growing up poor in “an Ohio steel town” (1), and goes on to provide detail on the white sub-demographic of which he is part: “working-class white Americans of Scots-Irish descent who have no college degree” (3).

Vance notes the Scots-Irish is “one of the most distinctive subgroups in America,” saying “their family structures, religion, and politics, and social lives all remain unchanged compared to the wholesale abandonment of tradition that’s occurred nearly everywhere else” (3). He identifies the positive traits of this demographic as intense loyalty and dedication to family and country, then the negative ones, with innate xenophobia chief among them.

Vance provides background on Appalachia, illustrating how large the region is and, at the same time, how cohesive its culture remains. He identifies Greater Appalachia’s political realignment from Democrat to Republican, post-Nixon, as redefining American politics.