So this is a book that I\u2019d been trying to find at the library for a while, and I\u2019m not sure if it was truly checked out until now, or if was just that my \u201clooking\u201d was in the memoirs section, when it was actually located in the 300s nonfiction. \u00a0(My library switched to a \u201cmarketplace\u201d concept several years ago \u2014 basically an oversized new books area in which the books are sorted into general categories rather than strictly by call number, to encourage more browsing.)<\/p>\n
The book is quickly described: \u00a0Vance, grandson of migrants from the hillbilly world of Kentucky to Middletown, Ohio<\/a>. \u00a0Mamaw and Papaw\u00a0acquired the trappings of middle-class-ness \u2014 a 4-bedroom house, new cars \u2014 but Papaw was an alcoholic for much of this children\u2019s childhoods, and family life was full of fighting, with hair-trigger tempers ready to flare to defend family or personal honor. \u00a0The author\u2019s mother cycled through marriages and live-in relationships, and multiple rounds of addiction and rehab, and he bounced between her home, his grandmother\u2019s, and brief stays with his father and a favorite aunt, and through it all, his experience of family life was, again, full of fighting and just plain meanness. \u00a0Although his life was full of chaos, he loved, and was loved by, his mother, grandmother, sister, and all the various aunts and uncles in the family. \u00a0Mamaw in particular provided a stable home life and insisted, in his later high school years, that he apply himself at school. \u00a0Eventually, he gained admission to college but, bewildered by the process, enlisted in the Marines instead, and, after 4 years there, used GI bill benefits, other financial aid, and his own earnings to attend college, pushing himself through at breakneck speed, and then, with a generous aid package, attended Yale Law School.<\/p>\n Now, it\u2019s particularly interesting to have read this in the context of some of my recent blog posts on identity and culture, and whether \u201cwhite America\u201d or \u201cAmerica\u201d (no modifier) has a culture that can in any way be compared to, say, the Bavarians getting decked out in their dirndls and lederhosen to celebrate Oktoberfest (fun fact: \u00a0the traditional dress, or Trachten, was on its way to being consigned to a few heritage societies until it was intentionally and deliberately revived \u2014 and it probably helped that a dirndl could be \u201csexed up\u201d for young Wies\u2019n-goers). \u00a0Because Vance has a clear \u201cethnic\u201d identity, and it\u2019s not \u201cwhite\u201d and it\u2019s not Scots-Irish, it\u2019s Hillbilly-American. \u00a0(OK, he just says \u201chillbilly.\u201d) \u00a0In the same way as a wave of migration brought blacks from sharecropping in the South to cities in the North in the 60s, there was a wave of migration out of the hill country of Appalachia to the factory towns of Ohio and elsewhere after World War II, and he describes being very aware of being \u201cof hillbilly ancestry,\u201d so to speak, and knowing that his family, and other hillbilly transplants, were different<\/em>, and that those differences, such as the quick-temperedness, left many of his peers flailing. \u00a0In particular, he writes of having to learn, as an adult in his first serious relationship, with the woman who later became his wife, how to resolve differences in more productive ways than a \u201cfight or flight\u201d reaction, and he observes that, in his extended family, the ones who \u201cmade it\u201d \u2014 and here he largely means in terms of personal and family stability more than financial success \u2014 were the ones who \u201cmarried out\u201d to people who were, well, \u201cnot mean\u201d to each other.<\/p>\n What\u2019s more, though Vance knows full well that the working-class face significant economic difficulties as plants close due to automation or globalization, he has witnessed enough destructive behavior to know that the actions of these people compound the situation. \u00a0He watches young people fortunate enough to find jobs, good-paying jobs, unable or simply unwilling to keep those jobs, showing up late or not at all, taking multiple, over-long toilet breaks, simply failing to do the minimum level of work required. \u00a0And he has watched drug addiction take its toll, not just in his own family, but in the community at large.<\/p>\n His experiences at Yale also teach him of the importance of social capital, something that he struggled to acquire. \u00a0He describes a complete lack of understanding of basics like \u201cwear a suit to an interview,\u201d and relates a dinner-interview in which he calls his girlfriend from the bathroom to ask what he\u2019s supposed to do with\u00a0the bewilderingly-large number of pieces of silverware.<\/p>\n In the end, Vance does not offer any big answers, and is skeptical that there are any big answers out there to be found, just the hope that policy solutions and\/or individual efforts might help kids at the margin, one at a time.<\/p>\n But have you seen the news reports<\/a> about the 7 year old whose parents both OD\u2019ed, and she told the bus driver that she couldn\u2019t wake them up, when, in fact, they were dead? \u00a0It\u2019s hard to fathom this \u2014 and you can find the facebook pages for these two sorry excuses for parents, and see these innocent children\u2019s pictures, at least as of earlier today. \u00a0A 9 month old baby, left uncared-for, or in the care of her 5 year old and 7 year old siblings.<\/p>\n Famously, \u201cHappy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.\u201d \u00a0Only just now in googling the quote did I learn that this is called the \u201cAnna Karenina principle,\u201d and is explained in Wikipedia<\/a> thusly:<\/p>\n The Anna Karenina principle describes an endeavor in which a deficiency in any one of a number of factors dooms it to failure. Consequently, a successful endeavor (subject to this principle) is one where every possible deficiency has been avoided.<\/p>\n The name of the principle derives from Leo Tolstoy\u2019s book Anna Karenina, which begins:<\/p>\n Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.<\/p>\n In other words: in order to be happy, a family must be successful on each and every one of a range of criteria e.g: sexual attraction, money issues, parenting, religion, in-laws. Failure on only one of these counts leads to unhappiness. Thus there are more ways for a family to be unhappy than happy.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n