Turns out his book is all lies.

When will he prove that he served in the Marines instead of shooting off
his foul effeminate mouth? He probably sucks good dick. How dare he
consider himself white when he's from such a trashy part of the USA.

Was J.D. Vance's Hillbilly Elegy Really a True Story? All About the VP
Candidate's Controversial Memoir

"It�s full of untruths, intentionally manipulative stories," said an
Appalachian scholar. Here's why the book was so controversial
By Lizz Schumer
Published on July 15, 2024 06:03PM EDT

With the news that the presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald
Trump has tapped Ohio Senator J.D. Vance as his vice-presidential running
mate, the senator�s 2016 memoir Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and
Culture in Crisis is back in the news.

The memoir is billed as �the true story of what a social, regional and
class decline feels like when you were born with it hung around your neck.�
While it hit No. 1 on the New York Times bestseller list and was later
adapted into a Ron Howard-directed Netflix film starring Amy Adams and
Glenn Close, many critics � particularly those who live in or hail from
Appalachia � questioned the accuracy of some of its claims.

�Elegy is little more than a list of myths about welfare queens repackaged
as a primer on the White working class,� said a New Republic story, at the
time. �Vance�s central argument is that hillbillies themselves are to blame
for their troubles.�

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U.S. Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH) walks into the Senate Chamber on Capitol Hill
on April 23, 2024 in Washington, DC. The Senate takes up a $95 billion
foreign aid package today for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan
J.D. Vance on Capitol Hill in April 2024.

Andrew Harnik/Getty
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�We spend our way to the poorhouse,� Vance writes in the book. �We buy
giant TVs and iPads. Our children wear nice clothes thanks to high-interest
credit cards and payday loans. We purchase homes we don�t need, refinance
them for more spending money and declare bankruptcy, often leaving them
full of garbage in our wake. Thrift is inimical to our being.�

In his review of the film for the Associated Press, Jake Coyle noted that
explanation was attractive to many readers, especially coming as it did
during Trump's first presidential campaign. �The 2016 book came at the
moment many were searching for explanations for the political shift taking
place across Appalachia and the Rust Belt," he wrote.

In another review of the film adaptation, Vulture writer Sarah Jones wrote,
"The book is poverty porn wrapped in a right-wing message about the
cultural pathologies of the region. In Vance�s Appalachia, poverty and
immorality intertwine. Success happens to hardworking people, and
structural explanations for poverty receive glancing attention when he
chooses to mention them at all.�
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in the Netflix Drama

�This region is huge, and there�s all kinds of people here; people of
different classes, races, ethnicities, genders, etc.,� Dr. Anna Rachel
Terman, professor of sociology of Appalachia, diversity in Appalachia and
women in Appalachia at Ohio University told Southeast Ohio magazine in
2020. �Distilling our understanding of the region down to one person�s
story is problematic because that larger diversity is not reflected.�

But there�s more to the issue than its factual merit, according to Silas
House, who talked to Politico about the book in 2020. House, an Appalachian
author himself and the Appalachian Studies chair at Berea College in
Kentucky, said he looks at Hillbilly Elegy as �not a memoir but a treatise
that traffics in ugly stereotypes and tropes, less a way to explain the
political rise of Trump than the actual start of the political rise of
Vance.�
JD Vance Hillbilly Elegy
'Hillbilly Elegy' by J.D. Vance.

Amazon

�I think that if it had just been a memoir, it would be a powerful piece of
writing, and it would be his own proof," he explained. "But the problem is,
it is woven through with dog whistles about class and race, gender. And if
your ears are attuned to those dog whistles, you know exactly what he�s
saying. If you�re not, then it can read like a heartwarming rags-to-riches
story.�

House also pointed out that the �intentionally manipulative stories� in the
book are so damaging because they offer generalizations that play into
harmful stereotypes.
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One scene in the book describes Vance�s uncles as �drunks who fight
everybody and they beat their wives.� He also calls them �the embodiment of
the Appalachian man.� But in House's view, that characterization was
�deeply troubling" and more representative of the stereotypes perpetuated
by the media than of actual Appalachian men.

Critics have also noted that Vance�s packaging of the memoir as �an
Appalachian narrative� is a bit of a misnomer, because his family moved
away from the Appalachian region two generations before Vance was born.
�Lots of times in the book when he�s talking about Appalachia, it�s almost
like he�s never been to Appalachia,� House pointed out. �This is a Rust
Belt story, but Appalachian stories, Appalachian literature, is its own
genre.�
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�If you read the book, you realize that hardly any of it is set in
Appalachia,� he added. �He�s saying, I guess, that generationally you can�t
escape Appalachia, because here he is, his grandparents left there when
they were very young, his mother never lived there, he never lived there,
and suddenly, after the book came out, he�s on every news show as the
representative of a region that he barely knows.�

According to Vulture's Sarah Jones, the book�s very title gave away its
author's agenda: �Vance� is a hero by virtue of his escape. The deceased do
not give elegies for themselves. Survivors do that. And so Vance can speak
for the hillbilly because he no longer is one; because he went to Yale, the
stereotype of the uncouth White reprobate no longer applies.�