Revisiting J.D. Vance's memoir, 'Hillbilly Elegy'

NPR's Book of the Day

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Books, Arts

4.2 • 672 Ratings

🗓️ 17 July 2024

⏱️ 8 minutes

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Summary

This week, former President Donald Trump announced that Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance will be his running mate in the 2024 election. Vance rose to prominence with his bestselling 2016 memoir, Hillbilly Elegy, which captured his upbringing in Appalachia and his family's intergenerational struggle with poverty, substance abuse and trauma. In today's episode, we revisit a conversation between Vance and NPR's Steve Inskeep about the book, in which he says there are ways politicians misunderstand white, working-class Americans.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, it's Empire's Book of the Day. I'm Andrew Limbaugh. Plenty of politicians have written books.
0:07.6	It's practically a key part of ascending the ranks. But I can't think of many in recent years who
0:13.4	first came to prominence by being an author, other than Ohio Senator J.D. Vance, who is now
0:19.5	officially former President Donald Trump's running mate. If you don't remember, the book that Vance wrote was titled Hillbilly Elegie. It was a memoir of him growing up in Appalachia. And it was a huge hit. It topped the bestseller list. It got on a bunch of year-end lists and turned Vance into a household name. He talked to NPR when the book came out in 2016,
0:39.3	and it's interesting to go back and listen because back then, he was just a Yale law grad working
0:44.2	at a venture capital firm who wrote a book. And yet, in this interview with NPR, Steve Inskeep,
0:49.2	you can already hear the kind of politician he'd end up becoming. That's ahead. In the U.S., national security
0:57.5	news can feel far away from daily life. Distant wars, murky conflicts, diplomacy behind closed doors.
1:04.7	On our new show, Sources and Methods. NPR reporters on the ground bring you stories of real
1:09.6	people helping you understand why distant events matter here at home.
1:14.1	Listen to sources and methods on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts.
1:19.7	Before we go on with the interview, I just want to set the scene a little bit.
1:23.1	It's August 2016 in the middle of the election between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton.
1:28.7	At this point, it is still unclear what future President Trump's voting block will look like,
1:32.9	but he's in the middle of crafting the Trumpian Republican Party.
1:37.3	All right, here's Stevensky.
1:38.7	Let's take a trip to Appalachia.
1:41.2	The presidential candidates have been doing that.
1:43.0	Both Hillary Clinton and Donald
1:44.3	Trump have spent time in states, including Ohio and Pennsylvania, both of them swing states,
1:49.9	which could decide this election, and both states that include parts of the Appalachian Mountains.
1:56.3	So does Democratic vice presidential candidate Tim Cain's Virginia, which is another swing state.
	...

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