I must confess that I knew little about Hillbillies and thought of it was meant only a derogatory way. The Beverly Hillbilly’s television show of the 60’s captured only glimpses of the reality of this subculture. Vance uses the term with love and respect. The book explains, in part, the rise of President Trump and the disillusionment that he was playing to in election speeches. However, the complexity of the brokenness will not be fixed by the shallow thinking of the newly elected. The book is so honest about the white working class and yet so tender. There is a weight that comes with reading the book that is not easily lifted. It feels in many ways like the end of something, maybe the end of empire.
“We don’t study as children, and we don’t make our kids study when we’re parents. Our kids perform poorly in school. We might get angry with them, but we never give them the tools—like peace and quiet at home—to succeed.”
“There is no group of Americans more pessimistic than working-class whites. Well over half of blacks, Latinos, and college-educated whites expect that their children will fare better economically than they have. Among working-class whites, only 44 percent share that expectation.”
“Pajamas? Poor people don’t wear pajamas. We fall asleep in our underwear or blue jeans. To this day, I find the very notion of pajamas an unnecessary elite indulgence, like caviar or electric ice cube makers.”
“So, to Papaw and Mamaw, not all rich people were bad, but all bad people were rich.”
“We talk about the value of hard work but tell ourselves that the reason we’re not working is some perceived unfairness: Obama shut down the coal mines, or all the jobs went to the Chinese. These are the lies we tell ourselves to solve the cognitive dissonance—the broken connection between the world we see and the values we preach.”