Hillbilly Elegy

About Hillbilly Elegy

J.D. Vance's Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis (2016) is a memoir about growing up in an Appalachian family in Middletown, Ohio, and Jackson, Kentucky, defined by poverty, addiction, unemployment, and what Vance characterizes as the cultural pathologies of the white Scots-Irish working class. Published before the 2016 election and widely read as an explanation of white working-class Trump support, it became one of the most widely discussed and controversial memoirs of the decade.