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asher553I've just finished 'Hillbilly Elegy' by JD Vance, in the audiobook. I just now ordered the Kindle edition so I can re-read it at my leisure. The author, now our Vice-President-elect, tells the story of his difficult upbringing in eastern Kentucky and southern Ohio without sensationalism and without sentimentality.
The clannishness of Appalachian people - with both positive and negative aspects - is one of the main themes of the book. Like mountain people everywhere, they are fiercely loyal to family and slow to change their ways. They are also fighters. Thomas Sowell notes in 'Migrations and Cultures' (p. 11) that
feuds have also been outlets for the fighting abilities of mountain men. The celebrated Hatfield and McCoy feud of the American Appalachian region was ... an example of a custom that went back to the parts of Britain from which so many Southerners came
and in fact we learn that Vance's maternal grandfather (whose surname JD adopted) had a distant cousin, Jim Vance, who married into the Hatfield family and murdered former Union soldier Asa Harmon McCoy, igniting that very feud.
JD's story centers on his difficult relationship with his prescription-addicted mother Bev; the support of his tough but loving maternal grandmother, whom he knows as Mamaw, and whom he credits with giving him the strength he needed to survive in a perpetually chaotic family environment; and his older half-sister Lindsay, Bev's daughter from a prior marriage, who had also benefited from the care of Mamaw and Papaw.
Writing of his return to Ohio for college after four years in the Marines, Vance writes:
In many ways, college was very familiar. I made a lot of new friends, but virtually all of them were from southwest Ohio. ... They were a little younger ... but I knew most of them from back home. ... [P]eople who are able to leave struggling cities often do, and when they find a new home with educational and work opportunities, they stay there. Years later, I looked at my wedding party of six groomsmen and realized that every single one of them had, like me, grown up in a small Ohio town before leaving for Ohio State. To a man, all of them had found careers outside of their hometowns, and none of them had any interest in going back.
Jordan Peterson grew up in a different generation and a different part of North America from JD Vance, but I was reminded of Peterson's vivid and chilling description of his native Fairview, Alberta. Poverty wasn't particularly a problem in Peterson's neck of the woods (or prairie), but boredom, aimlessness, and drugs and alcohol certainly were. ('Twelve Rules for Life', pp. 67 - 71.) "Everyone who eventually left the Fairview I grew up in knew they were leaving by the age of twelve."
Growing up with a mother who struggles with alcohol, prescription drugs, and mental illness is going to leave a mark on you. (I can attest to some personal experience on that point.) For Vance, this was exacerbated by his community's extreme poverty and ingrained dysfunctional patterns; it was mitigated by the presence of a caring grandparent and a strong, resilient sibling. After high school, Vance benefited from the salutary effects of military life (another experience I can vouch for), got an education in law and in the social graces, and learned how to be his best self for the sake of a loving relationship.
Cultural patterns, for good and bad, can be very stubborn, and may persist for many generations and across migrations. Finding your own way entails learning life's rules - from knowing which fork to use, to mastering your impulses and your anger - and often depends on having people in your life who want the best for you. [626]
The clannishness of Appalachian people - with both positive and negative aspects - is one of the main themes of the book. Like mountain people everywhere, they are fiercely loyal to family and slow to change their ways. They are also fighters. Thomas Sowell notes in 'Migrations and Cultures' (p. 11) that
feuds have also been outlets for the fighting abilities of mountain men. The celebrated Hatfield and McCoy feud of the American Appalachian region was ... an example of a custom that went back to the parts of Britain from which so many Southerners came
and in fact we learn that Vance's maternal grandfather (whose surname JD adopted) had a distant cousin, Jim Vance, who married into the Hatfield family and murdered former Union soldier Asa Harmon McCoy, igniting that very feud.
JD's story centers on his difficult relationship with his prescription-addicted mother Bev; the support of his tough but loving maternal grandmother, whom he knows as Mamaw, and whom he credits with giving him the strength he needed to survive in a perpetually chaotic family environment; and his older half-sister Lindsay, Bev's daughter from a prior marriage, who had also benefited from the care of Mamaw and Papaw.
Writing of his return to Ohio for college after four years in the Marines, Vance writes:
In many ways, college was very familiar. I made a lot of new friends, but virtually all of them were from southwest Ohio. ... They were a little younger ... but I knew most of them from back home. ... [P]eople who are able to leave struggling cities often do, and when they find a new home with educational and work opportunities, they stay there. Years later, I looked at my wedding party of six groomsmen and realized that every single one of them had, like me, grown up in a small Ohio town before leaving for Ohio State. To a man, all of them had found careers outside of their hometowns, and none of them had any interest in going back.
Jordan Peterson grew up in a different generation and a different part of North America from JD Vance, but I was reminded of Peterson's vivid and chilling description of his native Fairview, Alberta. Poverty wasn't particularly a problem in Peterson's neck of the woods (or prairie), but boredom, aimlessness, and drugs and alcohol certainly were. ('Twelve Rules for Life', pp. 67 - 71.) "Everyone who eventually left the Fairview I grew up in knew they were leaving by the age of twelve."
Growing up with a mother who struggles with alcohol, prescription drugs, and mental illness is going to leave a mark on you. (I can attest to some personal experience on that point.) For Vance, this was exacerbated by his community's extreme poverty and ingrained dysfunctional patterns; it was mitigated by the presence of a caring grandparent and a strong, resilient sibling. After high school, Vance benefited from the salutary effects of military life (another experience I can vouch for), got an education in law and in the social graces, and learned how to be his best self for the sake of a loving relationship.
Cultural patterns, for good and bad, can be very stubborn, and may persist for many generations and across migrations. Finding your own way entails learning life's rules - from knowing which fork to use, to mastering your impulses and your anger - and often depends on having people in your life who want the best for you. [626]
