Hillbilly Elegy

Hillbilly Elegy is a memoir by J. D. Vance about family; about Appalachia, hillbillies, and the American white underclass in the rural and semi-rural interior of the United States. Vance relates his traumatic, poverty stricken upbringing to the larger social problems in both his hometown and the larger population. He ties the growing opioid epidemic sweeping the country to the growing divide between Red and Blue. With frankness, he describes addiction in his family, the larger trauma of communities losing jobs, and finally the interventions that helped him rise out of poverty to attend OSU and Yale Law. Through his personal struggles, he raises questions of personal responsibility and role of government in communities.