I recently read Rick Bragg’s All Over but the Shoutin’ and J.D. Vance’s Hillbilly Elegy back-to-back. Both are memoirs of growing up in impoverished and broken homes in Appalachia – Bragg hails from northeast Alabama, while Vance’s kinfolk are from eastern Kentucky – and both are compelling reads, poignantly told. While Bragg’s writing may be a little more polished (he is a Pulitzer Prize winner after all), I found Vance’s insights more profound.
That may be because Vance is more willing to be introspective. Bragg tells his tale beautifully, but Vance spends a fair amount of time reflecting on how his family ended up as badly damaged as it did, and, by extension, how so many families like his end up in the same or worse condition. But the really powerful part for me – and actionable part for all of us – is Vance’s insight into how he made it out.
There was certainly no guarantee that he would one day graduate from high school, somehow score well enough on the SAT to get accepted to college, enlist in the Marine Corps where he served four years and did a tour in Iraq, enroll at Ohio State University and graduate summa cum laude in just two years (thanks to the Corps’ instilling in him the belief he could succeed and the capacity to plan), gain admission to and graduate from Yale Law School, and, perhaps most amazing of all given the models around him as a child, begin his own family and remain happily married to his wife of seven years, Usha Chilukuri.
When Vance was growing up, the odds of any of this happening for him were so remote as to be laughable. But then, in his sophomore year of high school, things got so bad with his mother (read the book to see why) that he moved in permanently with his grandmother. And that changed everything. Though still poor, for three years Vance lived in one place. For the first time, in Vance’s own words, “what I remember most of all is that I was happy – I no longer feared the school bell at the end of the day, I knew where I’d be living the next month, and no one’s romantic decisions affected my life.”
Years later, the adult Vance learned the term “resilient children” which refers to kids who thrive despite chaotic environments due to the support of a loving adult. J.D. Vance realized he was one of those resilient children, and the arc of his life changed because of the love of his grandmother. (Who was quite a character, by the way, and colorful to put it mildly. But she loved J.D.)
As the adult Vance reflected on his childhood and adolescence he also realized he knew several others – relatives and friends – just like him. Resilient children who made it when so many around them did not. In Vance’s words “each benefitted from the same types of experiences in one way or another. They had a family member they could count on. And they saw – from a family friend, an uncle, or a work mentor – what was available and what was possible.”
It is this modeling of other behavior – of other ways to manage relationships, solve problems, and pursue opportunities – that is game changing for teenagers (or young adults). And while it needs to be consistent, it doesn’t require a lifetime. Teenage J.D. didn’t move in with his grandmother until his sophomore year in high school. But those two and a half to three years were enough. Even though that represented only 1/6th of his life to that point, it was enough.
For those of us who may be in a position to make a difference in someone’s life when they need it, that should be encouraging. It won’t take our whole lives or theirs. It will just take enough time for the person on the receiving end of the support to feel loved and for the newly modeled behaviors to take hold. Then they can, as J.D. Vance did, not wait for something good to happen to them in spite of the odds. They can make something good happen for them in spite of the odds. Because they will have learned how and believe they can.
