Hillbilly Elegy by J D Vance

'You picked a Fine Time to leave me Lucille' - but where's Lucille's song? That's how I feel about Hillbilly Elegy, it's one-sided. JD Vance is an escaped hillbilly. He left Mamaw, Papaw and Ma to their drinking, drug addiction and fighting and escaped to Harvard Law School and wrote Hillbilly Elegy when 31. Well done JD - but he assumes everyone in Appalachia has the same family life that he did. There must be some hillbillies out there who get up in the morning and go to their badly paid or  sometimes even their well paid jobs, or who sign on welfare quietly and spend time playing with their chidren and helping them with their homework. Or who play football or make music. Weren't the Everly Brothers hillbillies?

It's a heartfelt book where JD says that hillbillies are often their own worst enemies, boozing, drug abusing, fighting and excusing their shortcomings by saying it's all the other guys fault. A  'lack of agency' And now the whole of America is reading this book and saying it's all the hillbillies fault too, And that's unfair.

I flicked through Hillbilly Elegy in an Exeter charity shop. Then I went online to read the response of others. Apparently there is a far more balanced and enquiring book called Ramp Hollow by Steven Stoll. Ramp Hollow analyses land ownership both of white people and native Americans in Appalachia and looks at how they were robbed. The book is more academic and harder to find. You won't find it in a charity shop but I have requested that my library purchase it.