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Cultural Identity In Vance's Hillbilly Elegy

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Have you ever wondered how life may look for a poverty stricken family? "Hillbilly Elegy" by JD Vance explains the southern culture and how he grew up along with the struggles of poverty, family issues , and how the strive for the American Dream looked like for him and his family. The book goes through many different themes such as social status, identity, and the impact that society has on people's lives. His family's struggles demonstrate how powerful the influence of cultural identity is, which offers a sense of belonging and support but also comes with its problems. The book is centered around the themes of cultural identity and the American Dream. The author begins by explaining the concept of cultural identity and how it shapes peoples' …show more content…

Vance's portrayal of his family and their struggles demonstrates the powerful influence of cultural identity. It also brings about challenges such as limited social status and lack of education making it difficult for people to break poverty. J.D. was mostly raised by his grandparents he called Mamaw Papaw and as a teenager, his grandparents moved away from a little coal mining town in Kentucky called Jackson, to Middletown Ohio where they raised Jimmy (their son), and two daughters, Bev(JDs mom) and Lori. At home there was alcoholism and domestic violence for JD. In public, the Vance family were very protective of each other and not interested in middle class behavior or rules. Thankfully, Papaw had a steady job at a steel mill which employed a lot of men from Middletown at the time. Through hard work, Papaw and Mamaw became financially stable and were able to provide for their kids. After JD was born the town of Middletown started to fall in the wrong direction both socially and economically. The generation with a strong work ethic that once filled the town was now lost. After Papaw’s death, Bev’s mental health and physical behavior went downhill fast. When JD was in high school …show more content…

He uses words such as “I” and “me” in the story to help build the story and give more context. “Whenever people ask me what I’d most like to change about the white working class, I say, “The feeling that our choices don’t matter.” (JD Vance). In this quote, he is explaining that when others ask about his background and upbringing he explains that he wishes they had more of a voice and felt as if it mattered. I like how he used the word “our” because I interpreted that as he doesn't separate himself from that culture even though it's not desirable, that's how he was

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As he moved from one mill town to another he adds a new family members Alice and Anna. They moved to homestead where they worked in steel mill. The conflict between the labor unions and the steel mill company in Braddock lead to attempt to closing the mill. Even though he gets paid more than we used to, rents were high

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Life had never been easy for Jeanette Walls, growing up she consistently faced several forms of adversity at the hands of her parents, such as hunger, sexual assault, practical homelessness, and abuse. With so many tribulations, one would expect her to have become another low income statistic. However, just like a mountain goat, who does not actually belong to the goat family, Jeanette is of a different breed. While her parents exposed her to many harsh realities, they also instilled many important life lessons, whether they were aware of it or not. If it weren't for Rex and Rose Mary Walls, Jeanette would not have been as tough, driven, or creative enough to have survived in Manhattan.

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If you believe that hard work pays off, then you work hard and you succeed. And I want people to understand something I learned only recently: I am lucky enough to live the American Dream, and so are you” (9). Growing up with a drug addict of a mother, no father figure, no money, and barely any education, Vance is almost guaranteed lack of success. Through determination, will, and ethic, however, Vance freed himself from the burdens of his town and family and emerged as an author and lawyer who uses his own life as an example to all that with hard work and intention, anyone can break from an unhealthy, inimical environment and strive to become successful. Additionally, this cultural aspect is connected to the purpose of the memoir; Vance’s intention is that through

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As the standard of living changed, so did the steps one family would need to take in order to survive. The rise of “railroad tycoons” and corruption made unfair wages paid to families even lower, forcing each member, including women and children, to support their families. This impacted numerous families negatively. Oftentimes, parents would work full days, only to come home at night to find their children asleep. “A stranger am I to my child; And he one to me” (Doc.

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In each Wes’s life, their peers had indeed often influenced them for the worse. The peers from the environment the Weses grew up in had spread the customs, values, ideals, and generally the entire culture of that environment to them. This environment the Weses were born into were the streets of the Baltimore region in Maryland in the latter half of the 1970s. While by 1984 the author Wes and his family had moved in with their grandparents into the similar environment of the Bronx, New York, where his grandparents had a similar positive, protective influence on him as his mother, the other Wes for the most part remained in the Baltimore area. This environment is that of poverty, drugs, and crime, and its culture has formed from these conditions.

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Hillbilly culture is one of the few American subcultures that has survived for more than three generations. In Ohio, hillbilly culture permeates through the towns of poor Scots-Irish laborers. In Hillbilly Elegy, JD Vance tells his story of upward mobility, from his roots in this hillbilly culture of Middletown, Ohio, to graduation from Yale Law School. Hillbilly culture is a love of country and loyalty to the community that can produce both upward mobility, as well as violence and drug abuse. Vance uses the book to discuss the polarity of hillbilly culture.

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J.D Vance’s Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis is a personal psychological, cultural and sociological analysis of poor white working-class Americans. Specifically, Hillbilly Elegy examines the life of the author in Middletown Ohio, a once booming post war steel town that today has a struggling economy, diminishing family values and a rapid increase in drug abuse. At the beginning of the memoir, Vance perfectly situates the reader to the uniqueness from his life in Middletown. Vance repeatedly wrote throughout the memoir that the youth living in this Ohio steel town has a bleak and troubling future. Vance illustrates the statistics that children like him living in these towns were lucky if they just manage to avoid welfare or unlucky by dying from a heroin overdose.

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