Hillbilly elegy : a memoir of a family and culture in crisis

Summary: Vance, a former marine and Yale Law School graduate, provides an account of growing up in a poor Rust Belt town that offers a broader, probing look at the struggles of America's white working class. The decline of this group, a demographic of our country that has been slowly disintegrating over forty years, has been reported on with growing frequency and alarm. J.D. Vance tells the true story of what a social, regional, and class decline feels like when you were born with it hung around your neck. The Vance family story begins hopefully in postwar America. J.D.'s grandparents were "dirt poor and in love," and moved north from Kentucky's Appalachia region to Ohio in the hopes of escaping the dreadful poverty around them. They raised a middle-class family, and eventually their grandchild (the author) would graduate from Yale Law School, a conventional marker of their success in achieving generational upward mobility. But as the family saga of Hillbilly Elegy plays out, we learn that this is only the short, superficial version. Vance's grandparents, aunt, uncle, sister, and, most of all, his mother, struggled profoundly with the demands of their new middle-class life, and were never able to fully escape the legacy of abuse, alcoholism, poverty, and trauma so characteristic of their part of America--Publisher's website.

Item details

ISBN: 9780062300546
ISBN: 0062300547
ISBN: 9780008220556
ISBN: 0008220557
ISBN: 9781410496669
ISBN: 141049666X
ISBN: 9780062300553
ISBN: 0062300555
Physical Description: print
regular print
264 pages ; 24 cm
Edition: First edition.
Publisher: New York, NY : Harper, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers, [2016]
Copyright: ©2016
Badges:
- Top Circs: 5 / 5.0
- Most Copies: 5 / 5.0

Contents / Notes

Bibliography, etc. Note:	Includes bibliographical references (pages 263-264).
Awards Note:	#1 New York Times Bestseller

Find similar items by subject

Subject:

Vance, J. D
Vance, J. D Family
Working class whites United States Biography
Working class whites United States Social conditions
Appalachian Region Economic conditions
Mountain people Kentucky Social conditions
Social mobility United States Case studies
Appalachian Region Economic conditions
SOCIAL SCIENCE Poverty & Homelessness
SOCIAL SCIENCE Sociology Rural
Economic history
Families
Mountain people Social conditions
Social mobility
Working class white people
Working class whites Social conditions
Appalachian Region
Kentucky
United States
Umschulungswerkstätten für Siedler und Auswanderer
Weise
Armut
Ausgrenzung
Kleinstadt
Arbeiterklasse
Arbeitssoziologie
Familiensoziologie
Sozialer Wandel
Appalachen-Gebiet
Appalachian Region Economic conditions
Vance, J. D
Vance, J. D Family
Working class United States Biography
Working class United States Social conditions

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