J.D. Vance to Speak at Miami University on HILLBILLY ELEGY Memoir

J.D. Vance, author of the best-selling 2016 book Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis, will speak at 12:30 p.m. Wednesday, Nov. 16, in Pavilion C in Miami University's Armstrong Student Center.

He will present "J.D. Vance: From Middletown to Yale to Scholar of Hillbilly Culture." The talk is free and open to the public.

Vance grew up in Middletown, Ohio, and Jackson, Ky. He enlisted in the Marines after high school and served in Iraq. After that, he earned degrees from Ohio State University and Yale Law School. In his book, he offers an account of growing up in a poor Rust Belt town with a broader, probing look at the struggles of America's working class.

The New York Times, where Vance is a contributor, called Hillbilly Elegy a "compassionate, discerning sociological analysis of the white underclass that has helped drive the politics of rebellion, particularly the ascent of Donald J. Trump."

The Economist said, "You will not read a more important book about America this year."

Released in June, "Hillbilly Elegy" has been listed near the top of The New York Times best-seller list for more than three months.

Vance is a principal at Mithril Capital Management LLC, a venture capital firm in the San Francisco Bay Area.

His visit is sponsored by the departments of media, journalism & film, family science & social work, English and political science; the individualized studies/Western program; and The Humanities Center.

The talk will be followed by a book signing, with books available for sale at the lecture.

For more information, contact Patricia Gallagher Newberry, senior lecturer in media, journalism & film, at newberpg@miamioh.edu or 513-529-5893.

From a former marine and Yale Law School graduate, a powerful account of growing up in a poor Rust Belt town that offers a broader, probing look at the struggles of America's white working class

Hillbilly Elegy is a passionate and personal analysis of a culture in crisis-that of white working-class Americans. The decline of this group, a demographic of our country that has been slowly disintegrating over forty years, has been reported on with growing frequency and alarm, but has never before been written about as searingly from the inside. J. D. Vance tells the true story of what a social, regional, and class decline feels like when you were born with it hung around your neck.

The Vance family story begins hopefully in postwar America. J. D.'s grandparents were "dirt poor and in love," and moved north from Kentucky's Appalachia region to Ohio in the hopes of escaping the dreadful poverty around them. They raised a middle-class family, and eventually their grandchild (the author) would graduate from Yale Law School, a conventional marker of their success in achieving generational upward mobility.

But as the family saga of Hillbilly Elegy plays out, we learn that this is only the short, superficial version. Vance's grandparents, aunt, uncle, sister, and, most of all, his mother, struggled profoundly with the demands of their new middle-class life, and were never able to fully escape the legacy of abuse, alcoholism, poverty, and trauma so characteristic of their part of America. Vance piercingly shows how he himself still carries around the demons of their chaotic family history.

A deeply moving memoir with its share of humor and vividly colorful figures, Hillbilly Elegy is the story of how upward mobility really feels. And it is an urgent and troubling meditation on the loss of the American dream for a large segment of this country.

J.D. Vance grew up in the Rust Belt city of Middletown, Ohio, and the Appalachian town of Jackson, Kentucky. He enlisted in the Marine Corps after high school and served in Iraq. A graduate of the Ohio State University and Yale Law School, he has contributed to the National Review and is a principal at a leading Silicon Valley investment firm. Vance lives in San Francisco with his wife and two dogs.