Găsiți următoarea audiobook favorită
Deveniți un membru astăzi și ascultați gratuit pentru 30 zileÎncepeți perioada gratuită de 30 zileInformații despre carte
Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis
Scris de J. D. Vance
Povestit de J. D. Vance
Acțiuni carte
Începeți să ascultați- Editor:
- HarperAudio
- Lansat:
- Jun 28, 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780062477521
- Format:
- Carte audio
Nota redactorului
Descriere
From a former Marine and Yale Law School graduate, a powerful account of growing up in a poor Rust Belt town that offers a broader, probing look at the struggles of America's white working class
Hillbilly Elegy is a passionate and personal analysis of a culture in crisis-that of white working-class Americans. The decline of this group, a demographic of our country that has been slowly disintegrating over forty years, has been reported on with growing frequency and alarm, but has never before been written about as searingly from the inside. J. D. Vance tells the true story of what a social, regional, and class decline feels like when you were born with it hung around your neck.
The Vance family story begins hopefully in postwar America. J. D.'s grandparents were "dirt poor and in love," and moved north from Kentucky's Appalachia region to Ohio in the hopes of escaping the dreadful poverty around them. They raised a middle-class family, and eventually their grandchild (the author) would graduate from Yale Law School, a conventional marker of their success in achieving generational upward mobility.
But as the family saga of Hillbilly Elegy plays out, we learn that this is only the short, superficial version. Vance's grandparents, aunt, uncle, sister, and, most of all, his mother, struggled profoundly with the demands of their new middle-class life, and were never able to fully escape the legacy of abuse, alcoholism, poverty, and trauma so characteristic of their part of America. Vance piercingly shows how he himself still carries around the demons of their chaotic family history.
A deeply moving memoir with its share of humor and vividly colorful figures, Hillbilly Elegy is the story of how upward mobility really feels. And it is an urgent and troubling meditation on the loss of the American dream for a large segment of this country.
Informații despre carte
Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis
Scris de J. D. Vance
Povestit de J. D. Vance
Nota redactorului
Descriere
From a former Marine and Yale Law School graduate, a powerful account of growing up in a poor Rust Belt town that offers a broader, probing look at the struggles of America's white working class
Hillbilly Elegy is a passionate and personal analysis of a culture in crisis-that of white working-class Americans. The decline of this group, a demographic of our country that has been slowly disintegrating over forty years, has been reported on with growing frequency and alarm, but has never before been written about as searingly from the inside. J. D. Vance tells the true story of what a social, regional, and class decline feels like when you were born with it hung around your neck.
The Vance family story begins hopefully in postwar America. J. D.'s grandparents were "dirt poor and in love," and moved north from Kentucky's Appalachia region to Ohio in the hopes of escaping the dreadful poverty around them. They raised a middle-class family, and eventually their grandchild (the author) would graduate from Yale Law School, a conventional marker of their success in achieving generational upward mobility.
But as the family saga of Hillbilly Elegy plays out, we learn that this is only the short, superficial version. Vance's grandparents, aunt, uncle, sister, and, most of all, his mother, struggled profoundly with the demands of their new middle-class life, and were never able to fully escape the legacy of abuse, alcoholism, poverty, and trauma so characteristic of their part of America. Vance piercingly shows how he himself still carries around the demons of their chaotic family history.
A deeply moving memoir with its share of humor and vividly colorful figures, Hillbilly Elegy is the story of how upward mobility really feels. And it is an urgent and troubling meditation on the loss of the American dream for a large segment of this country.
- Editor:
- HarperAudio
- Lansat:
- Jun 28, 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780062477521
- Format:
- Carte audio
Despre autor
Legat de Hillbilly Elegy
Recenzii
What I found most interesting was hearing from an "insider" about a community, a people, who although they live in the same country as I do, have access to the same media, news content, books, music, movies etc, are really very different from the people I know. The Appalachian community he describes is as foreign to me as that of the community from another, rather poor country.
This is a personal story, although the author references studies to bring context to his observations. He seems to feel equally as uncomfortable in his Ivy League surroundings as he did in his mother's home. He has ventured out of the community and now sees it from two differing perspectives. Looking back Vance sees the problems there were/are in his community, but does not presume to offer the solutions.
Vance writes about Social Capitol, about how he was never taught that there were programs to help kids like him go to College, he never knew that Ivy League schools would offer him more financial aid than State schools, he didn't know how to present himself at an interview, use the proper cutlery, write a resume, choose a wine, balance a checkbook or shop around for a better loan rate. He finds the idea of pajamas hilarious. We forget that somewhere along the line someone has to teach us the social skills/norms one needs to feel confident while pulling oneself up by the bootstraps. He was finally taught/told while at Yale, that who you know is as important as what you know. These are life lessons that can be incorporated in a school curriculum, as can topics such as financial literacy etc.
There are no solutions provided in this book, the one conclusion I was came away with is that having people in your life who can support, guide and enlighten you can make the difference between success or failure. Vance was very fortunate in that he had many such mentors and he was smart enough to listen to them.
ETA: Meh. I don't get why all the fuss and bother about this book. It's not bad, but I don't feel like it was full of earth-shattering revelations or anything. I mean, I guess if you grew up in an upper-middle class white world, there might be some new perspective to be gained into the lives of the lower-middle and lower classes. But. for me, the people described in these pages were neighbors and family and situations I knew from childhood. If you've ever eaten bologna sandwiches with ketchup because you're out of Miracle Whip, you can probably skip this one.