This book, subtitled A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis,
is exactly that, a memoir. Hard to think
of a memoir written by someone who was only 31 years old when he wrote
it! Vance himself confesses the
absurdity of this in his introduction where he writes, “I didn’t write this
book because I’ve accomplished something extraordinary. I wrote this book because I’ve achieved
something quite ordinary, which doesn’t happen to most kids who grow up like
me. You see, I grew up poor, in the Rust
Belt, in an Ohio steel town that has been hemorrhaging jobs and hope for as
long as I can remember.”
And so Vance begins to
tell his story. What makes this story
compelling is that, while it tells of all the ways in which the decline of manufacturing
jobs in the United States has left people behind, he is unflinchingly honest
about the ways in which many of his people, whom he calls “hillbillies,” have brought
about their own demise and their own lack of hope – their lack of care for
their children, their sinking into the drug culture, their laziness and lack of
any self-awareness.
Vance’s own family has had
its difficulties. As he writes, “I have,
to put it mildly, a complex relationship with my parents, one of whom has
struggled with addiction for nearly my entire life.” He himself came close to flunking out of high
school: “Whatever talents I
have, I almost squandered until a handful of loving people rescued me. That is the real story of my life, and that
is why I wrote this book. I want people
to know what it feels like to nearly give up on yourself and why you might do
it. I want people to understand what
happens in the lives of the poor and the psychological impact that spiritual
and material poverty has on their children.
I want people to understand the American Dream as my family and I
encountered it. I want people to
understand how upward mobility really feels.
And I want people to understand something I learned only recently: that
for those of us lucky enough to live the American Dream, the demons of the life
we left behind continue to chase us.”
Vance clearly has a great
love for the people about whom he writes, particularly his crazy grandmother
and grandfather – and “crazy” is his word, not mine. This love comes shining through the book even
when he sees clearly how the ways in which they act have negative effects on
everyone around them. — Jeanie Smith
