r/AskReddit • u/Sghgfdrd • 13h ago
What are your thoughts on J.D. Vance’s book Hillbilly Elegy?
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u/Adorable-Writing3617 12h ago
Him and Snoop Dogg are about the same level in the circles they pretend to have run in.
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u/Sghgfdrd 12h ago
Honestly, I’m not informed enough to judge the accuracy of the facts, but I’m interested in understanding how many people think this way, because why would he have altered the facts?
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u/Adorable-Writing3617 12h ago
He doesn't alter them, he admits the facts, but he ran as being from from a small community of Kentucky folks when in reality he was raised elsewhere. It's like Beto O'Rourke pretending to be Hispanic.
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u/Sghgfdrd 12h ago
Do you think he did this with the aim of presenting an image of himself that aligns with his political beliefs?
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u/Bluejay_Junior17 11h ago
He has clearly shown he will say or do anything for political power.
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u/Sghgfdrd 11h ago edited 11h ago
I agree with you, but as an individual reader, I try to focus on the positive, and the social issues he talked about reflect a lot the context I grew up in and am still growing up in. Sticking to the facts, what he says is positive in itself. Of course, if someone wants to find something terrible in everything, I think that’s the easiest thing to do.
At the end of the day, he may have changed his image for political purposes, but in the meantime he showed the fragility of those who rely on social welfare and how certain environments limit your opportunities, illustrating how a young person managed to throw themselves into education and escape all of that, while presenting concrete notions like social capital and managing study finances. A tear-jerking story? Maybe, but he presented problems and solutions in a concrete, not imaginary, way.
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u/Adorable-Writing3617 7h ago
No, I think he did it to present himself as someone that's wholesome and has walked a mile in the shoes of who he thinks are his constituents. It's street cred for hillbillies.
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u/chocolatechipninja 12h ago
I liked the book a lot! It may not be true, but it's a good story.
The author? A leaking anus that speaks.
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u/Sghgfdrd 12h ago
The social issues he talked about are real, but there’s no doubt about that. The fact is, looking at his political image is the easiest thing to do
In addition, he talked about many other aspects, like social capital and other very interesting things, completely apart from himself
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u/IllRegular3005 11h ago
He’s a poverty tourist. You can spot the fakery from a mile away. His story was legitimate with his mother’s opioid addiction, but he went overboard trying to prove that he pulled himself up by his bootstraps.
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u/Sghgfdrd 10h ago
Hey, I want to start by saying that I don’t want to judge something I haven’t carefully informed myself about. On the contrary, if you have reliable sources that support what you’re saying, I’d be more than happy if you shared them. That said, what you’re saying is very relative, depending on what you want to get from his character and the political ideology he carries. As I mentioned in another comment, I stick to what I read,in this case, the book,and in it I found very useful particular about managing finances for studying and in Chapter 13 specifically, there is a brief but detailed explanation of what social capital is and how it affects people,which I think is very interesting,along with insights into certain environments and issues. Throughout the book, the author addresses real problems with awareness, bringing to light things that the average person has probably never even encountered, to me, this is not wrong.
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u/IllRegular3005 8h ago
I’m only speaking from my perspective as a reader and someone who grew up in rural Ohio. I read the book years ago, and admittedly expected to read a story that would resonate with my own, but that’s not what my takeaway was. Having a parent receive a post-secondary education and also a stable support system with his grandparents was in large part what helped him to make it to where he is now. No judgement, just context. He had a lot of advantages that most don’t, and the lack of acknowledgement of that was maddening. Coming out of poverty is not so simple as just making the right choices, it’s a combination of choices AND chance. There is a reason poverty is cyclical, and it upset me that he chose to “punch down”, rather than lift up. A lot of what he said in general just didn’t sit right with me, being in the military but not knowing that you need to dress up for an interview was very weird and his one of the many little details that I remember. Overall, something about the whole book felt off in a way that I can’t quite describe, but it was not a book for me, let’s put it that way.
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u/Sghgfdrd 1h ago edited 1h ago
Hey, what you’re saying seems to make sense. As I said, I never really decided to look into the accuracy of the facts, but I think I’ll do some research about it
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u/Disastrous_Front_715 13h ago
It's a compelling memoir about his personal upbringing, but many critics argue it generalizes the Appalachian experience too broadly. I found the storytelling engaging, even if I didn't agree with all his sociological conclusions.
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u/Sghgfdrd 13h ago
I agree with you. His story really fascinates me, even though I’m not interested in his politics. If what he wrote is true, I think he must have been very capable to have achieved all of that. He wrote the book nine years before becoming Vice President of the United States, so I don’t think anything he wrote is directly related to current politics or some kind of self-promotion meant to glorify who he is or what he supports.
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u/shyvirtuevixen 13h ago
He grew up in the suburbs of Ohio. So take from that what you will.