Hillbillies: White, Poor and with Trump

“Hillbilly Elegy, A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis,” the autobiographical novel written by Vice President-elect JD Vance, offers clues to Donald Trump’s success

JD Vance, age 39, vice president-elect of the United States — and who knows what, in the future — writes in the autobiographical novel, “Hillbilly Elegy, A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis,” “You never start a fight; you always end the fight if someone else starts it; and even though you never start a fight, it’s maybe okay to start one if a man insults your family.”*

The son of a mother with a drug problem who was abandoned by her husband, he grew up deep within white, poor America — unknown to much of Europe — with his grandmother who gave him that advice. It is the America that has returned Donald Trump to the White House. Backed by the mega-rich such as Elon Musk and others who will become even richer, the decisive votes came from the America that is not in the movies: from the Rust Belt states, where Vance himself grew up, in Middletown, Ohio.

There is a Deusto University Spanish translation of the book and also a film, directed by John Howard, that is less nuanced but faithful to the novel, which depicts the Appalachian region, a mountain range running through the United States from north to south, including several of the key states responsible for Trump’s triumph.

Although there are other translations, in its broadest sense, “hillbilly” describes whites living in the region where Vice President-elect Vance grew up. With his reputation for cynicism, he now embodies the American dream of “coming from nothing to becoming almost anything.”

The book portrays the lives of “millions of working-class white Americans who don’t have a college degree.” “A people,” Vance writes, “for whom poverty is a family tradition: Their ancestors were day laborers in the Southern slave economy, then sharecroppers, then coal miners, and in more recent times, machinists and steel mill employees.”* Now many are unemployed, poor, and to some, regarded as “poor white trash.” But they vote — and they have voted — especially in those states that have decided the presidency. Trump, however little he cares for them and defrauds them, has managed to win their support.

There is more that could explain Trump’s victory, including the Democrats’ mistakes, but above all there are millions of Trumpist hillbillies. One understands America differently after reading the writings of the now-elected Vance, who has quite a political career ahead of him. Watch out!

*Editor’s note: Although accurately translated, these quoted passages could not be independently verified.