Once Donald Trump conquered his Republican rivals, who either left the race and declared support for his third quest for U.S presidency, or simply abandoned their ambition, he went about the task of choosing a running mate. He wanted someone young, someone who could add value to his ticket. He eventually settled for JD Vance, a 40-year-old lawyer and Ohio senator who once took him to the cleaners in interviews while promoting his 2016 memoir, ’Hillbilly Elegy’, now a Netflix movie. Trump’s choice of JD has brought more attention to the book as well as the movie.
JD introduces us to his people, the hill people who respect their dead, a people socially isolated, a people passing isolation from generation to generation, a people whose lives are built around churches where emotional rhetoric rather than social support thrive, a people afraid to relocate for better opportunities, a people with traits that make succeeding in a changing world almost impossible, a people marrying less and divorcing more, a people experiencing less happiness because of declining economic opportunities, a people badly in need of help. In short, JD unveils the white working class with ties to Appalachia who have lost not just economic power, but stable homes.
JD’s story is about someone with a grim future, someone almost unable to complete high school, someone in the throes of succumbing to the anger and resentment of the people around him, someone rescued from squandering his talent by loving people, someone who understands what it means to be spiritually and materially poor, someone of Scots-Irish descent but far away from white privileges, and someone whose life typifies living the American Dream.
We see how he grows up around people living in trailer parks, subsidised houses, small farmhouses and mountain homestead.
JD’s story is about the axis of misery where divorce is rampant, where violence reigns, where Appalachian poverty is incubated, where dysfunctional families live, where drug abuse is rampant and resilience can make a whale of difference. We meet his loving sister, his heroin-consuming mother Bev Vance, and his amazing maternal grandparents. His grandmother, we see in the movie, takes him away at some point from the house of his mother’s then husband where JD is being badly influenced. The movie also shows us Usha, his supportive girlfriend-turned-wife, and the encouraging role she has played in his life.
We see life in Middletown, Ohio, a small city where dozens regularly die of heroin overdose, where JD is seen as the abandoned son of a father hardly known and a mother no kid wishes for. We are taken through JD’s family history that brims with poverty and manual labour jobs. We are shown the family’s migration to Middletown, an enclave nestled between Dayton and Cincinnati, from Breathitt County, Kentucky after World War II, and we experience how their Appalachian heritage values loyalty and patriotism amid hardship and verbal abuse.
We see his grandparents struggle with alcoholism, and his mother battle drug addiction and turbulent relationships. We see his grandfather’s violent ways and how his grandmother sets fire to his grandfather in exhaustion. We also see their reconciliation despite challenges.
We see his grandmother’s tough love and guidance’s crucial role in his trajectory. Under his grandmother’s strict yet caring influence, Vance flourished. He eventually completes his undergraduate studies at The Ohio State University and earns a law degree from Yale Law School.
In the book, Vance explores the role of family and community in shaping their destinies. He critiques Hillbilly culture for perpetuating social breakdown and economic instability in Appalachia. Drawing from personal experiences, such as his time working as a cashier, Vance recalls seeing welfare recipients with cell phones, a luxury he couldn’t afford.
Vance’s resentment towards those seemingly benefiting from irresponsible behavior amid his struggle forms a foundation for understanding Appalachia’s political shift from Democratic roots to a strong Republican affiliation. He shares anecdotes that underscore his frustrations, including coworkers displaying a lack of commitment, such as a man quitting over work hours and another regularly skipping work despite having a pregnant girlfriend.
In the movie, we see how on the eve of a career-defining interview, he is called that his mother is down again, no thanks to heroin overdose. He rushes home because his darling sister can’t handle it alone. She refuses to stay in a rehabilitation centre and he takes her to a motel because his sister can’t deal with her, but while he dashes across the street to buy her food, she hides in the toilet trying to inject herself with more heroin. His return saves the day and he is, hours later, able to leave her to begin the long drive to meet up with the interview. He gets the job which starts him out on a beautiful life journey, a journey that sees this son of Donald Bowman becoming a senator and has landed him the slot of a running mate to a major candidate despite being a junior senator.
My final take: Being from a place where things have either gone south or are on the way to going south doesn’t mean one can’t make remarkable strides. All that is required is to make necessary moves and, most likely, the ordinary can take on the form of extraordinary. That is the long and short of the JD story.
