There are two parts to Hillbilly Elegy: 1) JD Vance’s autobiographical story and 2) a lot of sociological commentary.

His autobiography was fascinating. The sociological commentary is not interesting to me and, I don’t know, he’s not trained in sociology, so I don’t know how valid his thoughts and conclusions are.


But his autobiography! It was a wonderful view into generational poverty in the Appalachians and how those same people brought their culture up north. He had to learn to fight. Defending one’s honor was very important in that culture. His grandmother taught him fisticuffs. She was also the one single stable adult in his life who made sure he went to school. She was his guiding light, even though she was a tough little old hillbilly Granny.

He talks about his culture shock as he moved up in society and how he did not have the cultural capital that his peers had when he got to college so he had to figure things out that middle class people just know.

as an aside, his mentor in law school was the Tiger Mom who wrote the book about how she shaped her daughters’ lives and held them to very high standards.