Source: The Mythical Whiteness of Trump Country | Boston Review

This is a fantastic critique from the Boston Review of J.D. Vance’s bestselling HIllbilly Elegy.  I ordered copy of this book about a year ago after Trump’s victory, but it ended up being out of stock, and I never re-ordered it.  Now I’m kind of glad I didn’t bother.  It would appear that Vance is a little light on progressive populism, and his ethnography is weighed down by a racist mythology of the Scotch-Irish settlers of Appalachia.  Elizabeth Catte rightly points to the diversity of this region, which Vance apparently erases in puffing up his “‘hillbillies’ as a unique specimen of white woe.”