Mr. Vance was born James David Bowman in Middletown, Ohio, to a mother who struggled with addiction and a father who left the family when J.D. was still young.
He grew up sympathizing with his grandparents, “Mamau” and “Papau,” and described them in his 2016 memoir, Hillbilly Elegy.
Middletown is located in Rust Belt Ohio, but Mr. Vance feels closely connected to his family’s roots in Appalachia, a vast mountainous inland region stretching from the Deep South to the fringes of the industrial Midwest. It includes some of the poorest areas in the country.
Mr. Vance paints an honest portrait of the trials, tribulations, and poor decisions of his family and friends. And his book also takes a decidedly conservative view, portraying them as chronic spendthrifts, welfare-dependent, and mostly unable to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps.
He saw Appalachians “reacting to bad situations in the worst possible way,” and wrote that they were products of “a culture that encouraged rather than offset social decline.”
“Truth is hard,” he wrote, “and the hardest truths for mountaineers are the truths they have to tell about themselves.”
While he ridiculed “elites” and exclusive societies, he portrayed himself as a figure who contrasts the chronic failures of those he grew up with from an early age.
By the time this book was published, Mr. Vance had moved far from Middletown on his own, first enlisting in the Marine Corps and serving in Iraq, then attending Ohio State University, Yale Law School, and working as a venture capitalist in California.
“Hillbilly Elegy” not only made him a best-selling author, but also a sought-after commentator, frequently asked to explain Donald Trump’s appeal to white, working-class voters, and never missing an opportunity to criticize the then-Republican nominee.
“I think this election has had a really negative impact, particularly on the white working class,” he said in an October 2016 interview.
“What it does is it gives people an excuse to point the finger at somebody else. It gives them an excuse to point the finger at Mexican immigrants, at Chinese trade, at Democratic elites, or whatever.”
