Hillbilly Elegy

Following Trump’s election in 2016, political analysts began searching for explanations as to why an inarticulate, inexperienced bigot won the presidency over a vastly more qualified woman. Some liberal pundits cited racism, sexism, and “Bernie Bros” as the reason former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton lost to an unqualified man-child. Others said that the reason was much deeper, that poor white Americans were going through their own crisis that wasn’t motivated by pure racial hatred. So it’s no surprise that when J.D. Vance released his memoir about growing up in rural Appalachia, people lost their damn minds, lauding the book as a way to understand Trump’s appeal to poor hillbillies.

I was excited to read this book because I wanted a clear reason why Trump won and why poor white people largely vote Republican. I too grew up in a large rural Republican community. My parents consider themselves working class, although I would define them as upper-middle class. I was the first in my father’s family to graduate from university and I’m the only one on either side of my family to earn a graduate degree (although I have two cousins who are currently applying.) I also went to college in Appalachia (pronounced Ap-a-latch-a, not Ap-a-lay-sha) and saw first-hand the poverty in that part of North Carolina. In short, I was curious to understand how my high school classmates and family members could support a candidate who was woefully unqualified and offensive.

J.D. Vance grew up in rural Ohio in what some would call a broken family. His father was absent, his mother abusive, and his grandparents acted as stand-in guardians for him and his sister. Despite his difficult upbringing, Vance eventually went to college and even attended Yale law school. Since graduation, he’s worked for a venture capitalist and began a non-profit to target the drug crisis in rural Ohio. A quick Twitter scroll will show you he’s a Catholic who believes the “declining fertility in the [US] is a very serious problem”; he also tweets a lot about small government and freedom, but I’m willing to bet he doesn’t support a woman’s right to choose whether or not to have a baby. He has also been accused of being racist (which he denies.) I’m not going to comment on that because I haven’t checked enough sources. I suppose he’s a good person to comment on the crises poor white Americans are facing- he grew up as a poor white American and he worked hard to get out of poverty.

The flaw in this book is that it doesn’t really offer solutions to the problem at hand. It doesn’t explain how communities who depend on social welfare programs can vote time and again for candidates who will slash those programs. It received so much praise for offering an explanation on Trump’s election, but it didn’t explain how Republicans appeal to poor white people based on economics (which is a topic Vance reflects on in depth.)

Another major issue I have with the book is that it doesn’t discuss race. I’ll be completely honest: growing up in rural NC, I was fed some hard-core racism. I went to high school with members of the KKK who spray painted “white pride” on our buildings; I was told that only African-Americans vote Democrat; my grandmother once made me promise never to marry a black man (I think I was 7 or 8); my family used the n-word when referring to President Obama and Michelle. I’m not saying that all white southerners are racist, or that those who are raised to be racist can’t become non-racists. I’m saying that racism is rampant in the South and especially rural communities (Appalachia included.) Frankly, I think it’s irresponsible that Vance wouldn’t discuss racism considering how bad racism is among poor white Americans.

In short, I think this book works as a memoir, which is what it set out to do. But it’s not a commentary on Appalachian culture. It doesn’t explain how poor white people and white women continuously vote against their own interests. It doesn’t explain Trump’s election. If anything, it reinforces the hillbilly stereotype- poor, unhealthy, lazy, drug addicted, abusive, uneducated people- and I’m not sure that’s particularly helpful either.

Publication info

Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis. J.D. Vance. Harper, 2016.

273 pages

ISBN: 0062300547

 

Educated

It seems like everyone’s been talking about Tara Westover’s memoir since it was released last year. Born in a survivalist Mormon family, Westover grew up with limited education, extreme familial abuse, and rare interaction with people outside her community.

Despite her upbringing, she enrolled in Brigham Young University at the age of seventeen. While she struggled to learn common knowledge (she’d never heard of the Holocaust or the Civil Rights Movement until she attended university,) she graduated and continued her studies, earning a PhD from Cambridge and a post-graduate fellowship at Harvard. Her story is a true example of self-growth and persistence.

Educated examines Westover’s upbringing in the Idaho mountains where she and her family prepared for the end of times or a standoff with the government. Because of her parents’ mistrust of the government, they did not use public schools or hospitals. She recounts multiple incidents of injuries in her father’s scrap metal yard that her mother treated with herbs. She also discusses the abuse she endured from her older brother, who remained violent toward her (and other women) even after Westover left the mountain. As her education distanced her, both physically and intellectually, from her family, Westover was able to cut the ties between her abusive brother and her parents and siblings who enable his violence.

Publication info

Educated. Tara Westover. Random House, 2018.

ISBN: 0399590501

352 pages

The Sun Does Shine

This week has been incredibly emotional, what with watching the Notre Dame burn on Monday and finishing an incredibly poignant memoir a few days later.

In 1985, Anthony Ray Hinton, an African-American, was wrongly convicted of two murders in Birmingham, Alabama. He was sentenced to death, despite shoddy evidence from the prosecution, and spent 28 years on death row. In 2015, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously ordered an appeal and Alabama dropped its case against Hinton in light of the verdict and the alleged disappearance of their literal smoking gun. The Sun Does Shine is Hinton’s reflection on his time in captivity, daily existence on death row, the American criminal justice system, and the racism that is rampant within that system.

What I love about this book is Hinton’s magnanimity and his ability to forgive the individuals he met on death row and those who petitioned for his death. For instance, one of his friends in prison was Henry, a member of the KKK who was executed for lynching a black boy. Hinton empathizes with Henry, a man who was raised to hate and terrorize black people, who was taught whites were superior to all races. Examples like this are found throughout the book, showing Hinton’s humanity and his compassion for others.

Throughout his three decades on death row, Hinton maintained his innocence, replaying his trial over and over. While he scathingly criticizes the handling of his case and the American justice system at large, he often does so with a wry sense of humor.

Since his release only four years ago, Hinton has spoken extensively on death row reform and the injustices of the Alabama legal system. While I haven’t yet read them, I think The Sun Does Shine would be a great companion to Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness or Just Mercy: The Story of Justice and Redemption by Bryan Stevenson, who was Hinton’s attorney during the latter part of his appeal.

Publication info

The Sun Does Shine:  How I Found Life and Freedom on Death Row. Anthony Ray Hinton. St. Martin’s Press, 2018.

ISBN: 1250124719

272 pages

 

Maid

A few weeks ago, I spent an afternoon combing through my Pinterest board of books and making a fairly long list of titles to put in my queue at the library. I put the audio version of Stephanie Land’s memoir on hold through my library’s digital catalog and was pleasantly surprised when the book was checked out to me the following day.

Maid is Land’s reflection of her struggle as a single mother living in Washington, where she tries to piece together a living for her daughter and herself. Receiving very little support from her family or her daughter’s father, Land resorts to cleaning houses of affluent families. Despite her best efforts and hard work, Land struggles to support her daughter and turns to public assistance to survive. The memoir is an honest look at those who live below the poverty line in America and the struggles they face in order to obtain basic life necessities.

I can’t say this book was enjoyable, because being privy to someone else’s hardships is not pleasant. However, there are moments of hope sprinkled throughout the work and Land’s personal account illuminates what poverty can look like in one of the wealthiest countries in the world.  I think this book would be a great companion to others on poverty studies as it raises issues like child support, welfare, employers who keep their employees at part-time so they don’t have to provide benefits (i.e. health insurance, paid vacation, retirement benefits,) the living wage, and public judgment and opinion of public assistance recipients.

Publication info

Maid: Hard Work, Low Pay, and a Mother’s Will to Survive. Stephanie Land, Hachette Books, 2019.

ISBN: 0316505110

270 pages

A Serial Killer’s Daughter

It’s been a while since I’ve posted on this blog and that’s partly because I stopped reading around September of last year and partly because I moved to another state to begin a new job in February. Now that I’m almost settled in, I want to recommit to this blog because I really enjoy reading new books and sharing my thoughts on them.

In case I haven’t mentioned it before, I’m an archivist which means  I can spend nearly my entire workday listening to podcasts and audiobooks. I enjoy true crime and nonfiction books, but I really don’t like reading them because I tend to get bogged down by details. Audiobooks are the perfect way for me to consume these types of books.

A Serial Killer’s Daughter is Kerri Rawson’s, Dennis Raider’s (BTK) daughter, memoir. I expected it to be a history of BTK’s crimes- he murdered ten people in the Wichita area and sent goading messages to the police to describe his crimes. Instead, Rawson reflected on the effects her father’s legacy has on her. While she did describe some of her father’s offenses, her memoir is not sensationalist. It doesn’t harp on her father’s actions or his victims, but describes how she’s turned to religion to cope in the years after his conviction, including her diagnosis with PTSD.

Overall, the text was extremely moving; it showed that Raider was a decent father who was loved by his family. While Rawson in no way condones or attempts to rationalize her father’s actions, in a way, her writing does humanize him. The book contains a lot of biblical references and can come across as a bit preachy at times, but since Rawson’s religion has really helped her through this experience, I didn’t find it too annoying.

Publication info

A Serial Killer’s Daughter: My Story of Faith, Love, and Overcoming. Kerri Rawson. Thomas Nelson, 2019.

ISBN: 1400201756

336 pages