How Barbara Kingsolver and others took on J.D. Vance’s ‘Hillbilly Elegy’ : NPR

Republican vice presidential nominee J.D. Vance’s 2016 memoir, Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and a Culture in Crisis, is selling well again now that former President Donald Trump has tapped Vance as his running mate. Many have turned to the memoir to learn more about Vance’s upbringing, which is at the heart of why he became the Republican nominee in the first place. But the book also contains a number of assumptions that many authors still believe to be untrue.

Pulitzer Prize-winning author Barbara Kingsolver said she felt it was her duty to tell a different story of Appalachian life than the one Vance presented in his book.

“It was a victim-blaming trope. It was like a hero story: ‘I got out of here and went to Yale,'” Kingsolver said of Vance. “‘But those slackers have no ambition. They have no brains, so that’s why they’re where they are.’ I don’t believe that. It’s my job to tell a different story.”

Vance’s book has sparked controversy since it was published in 2016, especially among authors who cover the region. Vance, who writes that Appalachian culture “promotes, not prevents, social decline,” says his upbringing is central to his politics and thinking.

Many Appalachian writers like Kingsolver have worked tirelessly to combat what they feel are misleading and even harmful portrayals of the region. Her fictionalized version of the region, “Demon Copperhead,” was named one of the best books of the century by The New York Times just days before the Republican National Convention and won a Pulitzer Prize last year.

As hundreds of thousands more people read about the Appalachian plight, these authors are pushing back against what they call Vance’s assumed norms.

Getting Over “Hillbilly Elegy”

In “Hillbilly Elegy,” Vance writes that he lived most of his life in Middletown, Ohio, but spent his summers and free time in Jackson, Kentucky, until he was 12. He adds that Jackson “was the only place that was mine.”

Vance’s first stop after the Republican National Convention was a rally in Middletown, where he proclaimed, “I love every single one of you. I love this city. This city has shaped me and I’m so grateful. I wouldn’t be who I am without it.”

But Vance’s claim to the region has opened a cultural rift between him and Appalachian residents.

Kingsolver said a recently resurfaced interview with Vance in which he called several Democrats “childless catwomen who are miserable about their lives and the choices they make” reaffirmed her disappointment with “Hillbilly Elegy.”

“When I read J.D. Vance’s memoir, I was outraged from start to finish. There was something about him that told me he’s not from here, that he doesn’t understand us,” Kingsolver told NPR. “I thought, OK, you’re not from here. Because when I think back to my childhood, many of the most important women in my life who saved me and took care of me were women without children. It’s not just blood ties that define the community here.”

Kingsolver isn’t the only one with a different story.

Meredith McCarroll and Anthony Harkins co-edited Appalachian Reckoning: Regional Responses to Hillbilly Elegy , a 2019 book that blends scholarly, poetic, and narrative counterarguments to Vance’s story.

Harkins, an assistant professor of history at Western Kentucky University, said “Hillbilly Elegy” loses ground by generalizing one man’s story as the definitive account of an entire region.

“It’s entirely legitimate for anyone to tell their own story and how they see it,” Harkins told NPR, “but to present it as an Appalachian story, as a cultural memoir, is problematic, especially since the region has so often been stereotyped and misrepresented throughout recent history.”

McCarroll, director of writing and rhetoric at Bowdoin College and an Appalachian native from Waynesville, North Carolina, said the pair’s goal with the book was to respond to the enormous popularity of “Elegy” by spotlighting the chorus of Appalachian voices that exist both in isolation and in opposition to the text.

“My hope was to bring together a range of voices, some that disagree with Trump and some that don’t speak to him at all,” McCarroll told NPR. “Weaving together a range of authentic perspectives shows how layered and complex these 13 states are.”

McCarroll added that going beyond “Hillbilly Elegy,” “Appalachian Reckoning” wants to counter the idea that Appalachia is a monolithic place.

“The second half of the book goes beyond ‘Hillbilly Elegy,’ and is really just a collection of stories from the region that you can’t read and think you understand Appalachia,” McCarroll says. “You shouldn’t say, ‘I read one book, and now I understand the region.'”

Write the whole truth

For these writers, telling honest Appalachian stories is of utmost importance, even if it means starting difficult conversations.

Historian Elizabeth Catt, author of the 2018 book “What You Are Getting Wrong About Appalachia,” said books about Appalachia fall short because authors rely on inaccurate stereotypes in their quest for authenticity.

“Sometimes people try to whitewash their personal knowledge, experience, and research of a region by filling a book with a lot of metaphors and presenting it as authentic,” Catt told NPR. “Appalachia has a history, and sometimes it doesn’t feel like a place full of problems, but those problems don’t have causes, or the causes aren’t interesting to the author.”

Vance’s story has resonated with conservatives and those outside Appalachia. After the 2016 election, the book became an explanation for some liberals about who Trump’s supporters were and how he won the presidency. One editorial called Boston residents “ecstatic” about the story.

The book was a bestseller and later turned into a movie, but for residents of the area, a key piece of Vance’s puzzle is missing.

Harkins said that when discussing Appalachian history, it’s important to keep in mind the economic context of the text, such as the political and cultural history of Appalachia around coal, when considering how the past has transitioned into the present.

“You can’t talk about the Appalachian experience of the past 100 years without considering the profound impacts of economic change in a land that is so often the product of extractive industries: logging, coal, fracking,” Harkins says. “One of the concerns I have about looking at it through the prism of ‘Hillbilly Elegy’ is that so few of those elements are part of the story.”

While Vance’s political views may not be popular with all readers, he spent a large part of his speech at the Republican National Convention talking about his relationships with his mother and grandmother, delivered just two days after the nomination. These relationships are where the two writers found common ground. In Kingsolver’s fictional exploration, it was equally important to bring Demon’s humanity to the forefront, for readers and for herself.

“I was anxious about writing this novel for years because I couldn’t just hit the reader with sadness and excruciating truths,” Kingsolver says, “unless I packaged it in a really compelling package. I had to give the reader a reason to turn the pages. I had to give them characters that they could love, believe in, and begin to genuinely care about as friends.”

The power of expression

Kingsolver said Appalachia celebrated in typical Appalachian way when “Demon Copperhead” won the Pulitzer Prize last year.

“It was like fireworks up and down the mountain,” Kingsolver said. “A lot of people here, even the mailman and the cashier at the grocery store, were like, ‘Wow, we won.'”

The novel has also been embraced by many outside of Appalachia: It unanimously won the 2023 Women in Literature Award and was recently ranked #1 on The New York Times Readers’ Poll list of the Best Books of the Century and #61 on the Critics’ Poll list.

McCarroll said with novels like “Demon Copperhead” being published recently, it’s hard to continue to resent the negative aspects of “Hillbilly Elegy.”

“What’s so exciting is there are so many really diverse and beautiful stories that present really complex perspectives, so I feel like I don’t need to keep getting mad at Hillbilly Elegy,” McCarroll said. “There’s a long history of Appalachian literature as well.”

McCarroll added that diverse stories are important because they add depth to a neighborhood that’s too often boxed in to one corner.

“What a black coal miner in Appalachia Pennsylvania is experiencing may be very different from what a Mexican immigrant worker in western North Carolina is experiencing, and it may be very different from what a white third- or fourth-generation farm worker in Kentucky is experiencing,” McCarroll said.

Kingsolver said that in writing “Demon Copperhead,” it was important to him to combat mainstream media assumptions about Appalachia.

“I think they miss our diversity. They think we’re all white, but we’re not. It was important to me to reflect that in the novel,” Kingsolver said. “I wanted this to be a great Appalachian novel that puts our whole region in context. We didn’t choose our poverty and low unemployment. We didn’t ask for it. This came to us.”

Kingsolver added that it’s been especially gratifying to hear from people who say that reading her novel has changed their perspective on Appalachia.

“We’ve heard from people in many parts of the country who have said, ‘This book has made me reexamine my prejudices, and I’m grateful for that,'” Kingsolver said. “That’s wonderful.”

When Kingsolver got the news last month that he’d made it to the top of The Times’ readers’ list, he said he had to “lay on the floor” and consider the weight of it. But he said the less obvious reward was seeing readers celebrate the story of an imperfect, wholly Appalachian character.

“I can’t tell you how many people write me that they’re still worried about Damon. They wake up at night worried about Damon,” Kingsolver said. “It’s like Damon has become their child. He’s the world’s child. That’s the way we’re going to get through it. That’s the way we have to get through it.”

While “Hillbilly Elegy” may loom large again, Appalachian writers are finding strength in resistance and dissent, whether in fictional stories like “Demon Copperhead” or deep nonfiction reflections like “What You’re Wrong About Appalachia.”

Reacting to the news that she had been included on The New York Times list, Kingsolver wrote in an Instagram post:

“Since another ‘redneck’ book has suddenly become popular, it is my duty. No lamentations here, thank you.”