Life in Jackson City, Kentucky, is hard. In fact it’s so hard that, according to the New York Times, it’s one of the 10 hardest places to live in the United States.
In a recent column, I cited economic arguments to explain why rank-and-file white evangelicals in places like Jackson were quicker to embrace Donald Trump than their religious values might otherwise suggest. Economic theories alone, however, do little to humanize rural poverty and rarely provide a practical roadmap out.
Enter J.D. Vance and his timely portrait, "Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis." Vance’s family hails from Jackson City, where the median household income hovers around $23,000, obesity plagues nearly half the population, and there are more disabled and unemployed than college educated. Drugs are ubiquitous.
More than a litany list of problems, however, Vance’s memoir is both a candid look at the complex issues facing coal country and a case study in how family and a sense of personal responsibility can redeem the anti-social elements (and enhance the best markers) of what Vance lovingly dubs “hillbilly” culture.
Such lessons about Appalachia and the rustbelt may seem irrelevant to our bullish Beehive State economy. Yet with Utah's rural coal industry in decline and with our state's persistent prescription drug problem, the perils Vance outlines should serve as a canary in the coal mine.
Moreover, against the backdrop of an election year in which both presidential candidates seem eager to blame society’s ills on just about everything and everyone — immigrants, corporate elites, global competitors, the media, and each other —Vance’s memoir nudges us to remember to take personal responsibility.
As Vance put it in a recent interview, “We’re no longer a country that believes in human agency, and as a formerly poor person, I find it incredibly insulting. To hear Trump or Clinton talk about the poor, one would draw the conclusion that they have no power to affect their own lives.”
Raised in Jackson City, Kentucky, and Middleton, Ohio, Vance’s adolescent life is a meditation on how impoverished communities sometimes fail to cultivate childhood confidence and personal responsibility. Yet Vance shows that one can still succeed in America despite their circumstances, representing the best in “hillbilly” culture.
“I learned domestic strife from the moment I was born,” he recently said. With more than 15 stepdad figures, Vance became the victim of domestic abuse. And yet, today Vance is a married white-collar professional with a degree from Yale Law School — a testament to the human ability to swap out the deck they've been dealt.
In talking with Vance over the phone and contemplating his rise from poverty, I'm reminded of Joseph Sorentino's autobiography, "Up from Never," which details his teenage road from juvenile detention and jail to become the valedictory speaker of his Harvard Law School class and a respected judge. While Vance was not in prison, his environment was in many ways a psychological imprisonment.
The lesson is that despite our circumstances we can choose; we can change. Of course, while the lesson may be clear, the reality is complex — choosing to change is never easy.
Family, public education and the Marines all played important roles in shaping Vance's path to a better life. Yet, as he insists, there was never a government panacea — in the end, it was a choice.
Vance is quick to acknowledge, however, that he was also incredibly lucky. “Thinking about it now, about how close I was to the abyss,” he writes, “gives me chills.” Sadly far too many impoverished youth — many in our own backyard — never end up making it out, let alone penning memoirs about it.
Take Brian, an impoverished teenager in Kentucky whose mother recently died of an overdose. Vance wonders whether Brian's community will be “tough enough to do what needs to be done to help a kid like Brian.” He wonders, “Are we tough enough to build a church that forces kids like me to engage with the world rather than withdraw from it?” For Vance, family, culture and community all play a role in helping children feel in control and exercise meaningful agency.
“Believing you have no control is incredibly destructive,” he remarks, “… the refusal to talk about individual agency is in some ways a consequence of a very detached elite, one too afraid to judge and consequently too handicapped to really understand.”
Vance’s book and his life push us to see the potential for human agency amidst otherwise intractable circumstances, highlighting the best in "hillbilly" culture. As it is in Kentucky and Ohio, so too it is in Utah, “Public policy can help, but there is no government that can fix these problems for us.” Only we can.
Hal Boyd is the opinion editor of the Deseret News. Email: hboyd@deseretnews.com, Twitter: Halrboyd