The Paw Print

By Steven Jiang, Associate Opinions Editor

When J.D. Vance first published Hillbilly Elegy in 2016, he was in the right place at the right time. Political commentators and analysts were searching for answers to explain Trump’s improbable win. In particular, Trump had swept the Rust Belt, a region in the Midwest that has long suffered from the decline of manufacturing industries. While the memoir itself concerns Vance’s personal story of social mobility, it was lauded as a window into America’s white working class. But is it really an insightful piece, or is it merely propaganda that preaches to the choir? 

Hillbilly Elegy is Vance’s memoir of his turbulent upbringing in Middletown, Ohio, infused with social commentary throughout. The book launched Vance’s political career six years later when he became the junior senator of Ohio. 

He’s now the vice president-elect of the United States.

Ever since Vance was announced as Trump’s running mate, misinformation has circulated around Hillbilly Elegy. I knew I had to read it for myself. 

Despite several shortcomings, I found Hillbilly Elegy to be insightful, vividly narrated, emotional, and well worth the read. It’s a perspective that most of us are likely unfamiliar with, and it’s more relevant than ever in American politics today.  

Vance portrays hillbillies as a marginalized group. 

In his introduction, Vance urges his audience to consider poverty without a racial lens. He also painstakingly distinguishes himself from the “elites of California, New York, and Washington, D.C.,” insisting that he enjoys little social privilege despite being a white man. He indirectly compares the white working class to people of color, which may hold some truth, but is definitely not a race-blind perspective. 

Hillbilly Elegy also directly challenges traditional narratives of poverty. Vance’s family enjoyed a stable income and he lived in a home with typical appliances, including a television. Like most American kids, Vance watched cartoons and attended decent public schools as a child. Yet he lived in a world of deep pessimism. His town experienced prolonged decline as businesses shuttered and the steel jobs evaporated. His people were cut off from the “coastal elites” not primarily due to lack of opportunity, but by a self-destructive culture of learned helplessness. 

Whether he originally intended to or not, Vance puts a human face on Trump’s neo-populism and invokes a profound sense of sympathy from his audience. 

The memoir itself is surprisingly nonpartisan.

Although he explicitly states in the memoir that he is a conservative, Vance offers nuanced perspectives on how to best confront the social crises that plague his community. 

Recounting his experience working at his local grocery store, he criticizes food stamp recipients for spending wastefully at the expense of working people’s taxes. However, he later acknowledges that welfare programs provided his family with basic necessities when they needed them the most. Above all, Vance emphasizes that the efficacy of government policies is severely limited by social factors that prevent people from taking advantage of their opportunities. 

Furthermore, Hillbilly Elegy is not the self-aggrandizing and condescending memoir that Vance’s detractors allege it to be. Throughout the book, Vance goes to great lengths to emphasize his humility. He claims in the introduction that “whatever talents I have, I almost squandered until a handful of loving people rescued me,” and asserts that “there are no villains in this story.” His portrayal of his hometown’s struggles is neither black-and-white nor deliberately spun in order to serve his own political ideology. 

He acknowledges the rise of far-right influence in the region.

Vance notes that over the past decade, many people in Rust Belt communities have adopted increasingly fringe political views, including conspiracy theories about Obama’s citizenship. He attributes them to a broad sense of alienation within society. For hillbillies, the hopeful ideals of the American Dream are juxtaposed with the harsh realities of poverty and violence at home. While the rest of America prospered and Obama’s journey of social mobility was hailed as a shining example of what could be, Vance’s community grew to deeply distrust mainstream institutions. They instead pivoted to far-right news sources like Alex Jones, who has notoriously promoted extreme conspiracies about 9/11 and school shootings. 

Notably, he downplays the potential role that racism could have played in the partisan backlash against Obama. Hailing from a predominantly white community, Vance’s explanation does not fully account for why so many people from Middletown would embrace provocateurs that openly espouse racial hatred.  

Vance criticizes a culture of despair in the Rust Belt.  

The mentality of alienation, Vance explains, foments a culture where people believe that their own choices and actions are meaningless. He draws upon an anecdote of a man who quit his job and blamed the “Obama economy.” This exemplifies the shift from pure hopelessness to blaming external factors, including the government and other minority groups, for all of their struggles. Resentment has pervaded all aspects of life in the Rust Belt, squandering away the few opportunities of social mobility that do exist. 

Contradictions are an overarching theme throughout Hillbilly Elegy: while most elite colleges offer low-income scholarships that drastically reduce tuition, many parents still believe that the Ivy League is rigged against them. While people spend extravagantly on consumer products, they live off of cheap fast food. While Vance’s society deeply values family loyalty as an expression of pride, many children are permanently scarred from domestic violence. 

This is the cornerstone of Vance’s “personal responsibility” argument: Rust Belt Americans are suffering primarily from self-inflicted wounds, not government policies. He identifies culture as a root cause. 

Vance particularly highlights the issues of domestic violence and instability.

In the most poignant moments of the book, Vance describes growing up in a family marred by addiction, violence, and lack of a consistent father figure. 

He had a complex relationship with his mother, who struggled with drugs throughout her life. Vance recalls escaping out of his mother’s car after she threatened to kill them both by crashing. In another moment, his mother was handled into a police cruiser after suffering a violent breakdown. His mother went through a series of broken and abusive relationships that profoundly affected his childhood. 

Although his mother failed in many ways as a parent, Vance chooses to humanize rather than disparage her. He acknowledges that deep down, his mother always loved him despite her personal struggles. 

Vance especially pays homage to his grandmother Mamaw for serving as a role model in his life when no one else would. She shielded him from the worst of his family’s dysfunction and  consistently encouraged him to focus on his education. 

Regardless of your views on Vance’s political positions, his ethos growing up as a “hillbilly transplant” can’t be denied. His childhood trauma from domestic violence deeply scarred him for the rest of his life. Indeed, Vance cites family instability as a key barrier to opportunity for young people in the Rust Belt. 

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I choose to interpret Hillbilly Elegy in the context in which it was written, present-day politics aside. Of course, Vance’s personal experiences do not necessarily reflect the Rust Belt as a whole, nor does he propose concrete solutions to the problems he outlined. But that’s not the point. Vance simply sheds light on real crises that plague millions of Americans, however distorted they may be. He provides valuable insight into his own worldview in the process. 

Vance asserts that he remains a hillbilly at heart, retaining the good, bad, and ugly. At the conclusion, Vance discusses his struggles with PTSD and his ingrained fight-or-flight response, while praising the “toughness” of his people. But while the Vance of 2016 condemned the toxic culture of pointing fingers, the Vance of 2024 is a fierce partisan who has not shied away from controversy. He has repeatedly associated himself with the far-right extremists that he once condemned.  

On Jan. 20, 2025, Vance took the oath of office and became the 50th vice president of the United States. His actions in the White House will serve as the final verdict on how genuine Hillbilly Elegy really was.