Staff Review: Hillbilly Elegy by J. D. Vance

Hillbilly Elegy by J. D. Vance, now in its 28th week on the New York Times bestseller list, is a memoir written and published at just the right time, as Americans coast to coast struggle to figure out how we got ourselves into the violently polarized political mess we're in.

Vance, a self-described hillbilly who is now a Silicon Valley investment-firm lawyer, offers his take on the subject with this story of his upbringing. Originally from Kentucky, his family hit the Hillbilly Highway as part of the early-to-mid 20th century migration of Appalachians to northern Rust Belt cities. At the time those cities were thriving; now many are as hopeless as the hollers from which the migrants fled.

Vance's early life makes for fascinating, if heartbreaking, reading. There's lots of bad judgment on the part of his elders. Plenty of poor life decisions. Much substance abuse, violence, and bad grammar. But despite the dysfunction of his mother and most of her men, Vance grew to appreciate the value of effort and education. This was largely due to his grandmother, Mamaw, a firebrand who once doused her drunken husband with gasoline and dropped a lit match on his chest. (In her defense, she had warned him that she'd do it, he survived largely intact, and he was less inclined to get hammered ever after.) Mamaw also saw to it that Vance did his homework. Her house became his real home.

His academic diligence, followed by a stint in the Marines, paid off handsomely, winning him entry to Ohio State and Yale Law School. Depending upon your point of view, the pages that narrate the courting of Yale law-school students by the most powerful of the big corporate law firms may strike you as almost as nauseating as the hillbilly dysfunction. Vance himself seems OK with it, although he has a lot of proper-fork-for-the-course learning to do.

And that's my main problem with this book. While plenty of critical (and admittedly compelling) attention is paid to the degraded state of the shiftless "have-nots," not much is said about the culpability of the "haves," those on the privileged side of our Grand-Canyon-sized income gap, the side Vance fled to with the speed of a famished cheetah. But not everyone can become a Silicon Valley millionaire or a corporate CEO. I wish Vance had given more thought to what his influential new crowd might do to improve the lives of all those hillbillies back home.

~Ann, Adult Services

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Staff Review: Small Great Things by Jodi Picoult

The title of this book, Small Great Things, comes from a quote that is attributed to Martin Luther King.  Given the current tenor of intolerance in our country, Jodi Picoult's story of an African American nurse who is accused of murdering a white supremacist couple's infant, struck a definite cord with me.  The story is told from three viewpoints, the nurse, the defense attorney and the father of the deceased baby.

Ruth Jefferson, a labor and delivery nurse for 20 years, is at the top of her game.  She loves her job and feels her co-workers respect and like her. During a routine check up of newly delivered baby, Ruth is confronted by the baby's father and told not to touch his wife or baby again.  He asks for Ruth's supervisor and Ruth very quickly learns that she is prohibited from caring for the baby in any way.  A note is put in the file that no African American staff is allowed to come in contact with this family-Ruth is the only black nurse in the department.

Of course an emergency with the baby comes up and Ruth is the only one around for several minutes.  The baby ultimately dies and Ruth's life is turned upside down when she is blamed by the parents and the hospital administration and placed under arrest.

It is at this point in the novel that I could feel myself starting to get uncomfortable.  At first I was outraged at how Ruth and her teenage son are treated so unfairly.  Much of the racism is overt and disturbing.  But as the book progresses its the subtle forms of racism that really started to bother me.  I could identify with Ruth's defense attorney who did not see herself as racist in any way.  Kennedy considers herself "color blind" but discovers some hard truths about herself and the legal system as the case progresses and she gets to know Ruth more intimately.

This book pushed me to reflect more deeply about my own prejudices and how even when you have the best intentions you may have a bias that you aren't fully aware of.  That feeling of discomfort that crept in as I was reading stuck with me for days after I finished the book.

Personally I really appreciate a book that makes me revisit how I view the world and my own values.  We are never too old, or hopefully too jaded, to take stock of the human condition and look for ways to be a better person.

~Michelle, Circulation