Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis

　　英文 hillbilly指的是「住在山裡貧窮沒水準的白人老粗」，特別是美國東南方阿帕拉契山附近幾個貧窮內山州郡居民（比如西維吉尼亞州、肯德基州等地的貧窮白人），這個族群正是此次選舉中川普的強力支持者。

　　本書作者凡斯就來自這樣的白人藍領階級，他的家庭破碎，充滿爭吵與暴力，是典型的hillbilly家庭，而他卻打破階級疆界，成為耶魯大學法學院高材生，晉升最高學術及社會地位。在《鄉巴佬的輓歌》中，凡斯對比了他失敗的童年與成功的成年，他想知道，為什麼他可以在毫無希望的貧窮白人社區中，實現了他那些工人階級同溫層已不再有人相信的美國夢？他想知道，為什麼耶魯大學法學院沒有更多像他一樣低下背景的人？他從各方面分析他的原鄉，探討他們的貧窮、暴力、無知、犬儒與恐懼，乃至最後，他們對主流美國社會的報復：把票投給川普。
 

　　SOON TO BE A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE

　　‘The political book of the year’ Sunday Times

　　‘You will not read a more important book about America this year’ Economist

　　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 post-war 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 humour and vividly colourful 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.