How liberals turned on JD Vance, working-class author of ‘Hillbilly Elegy’

MIDDLETOWN, Ohio — When J.D. Vance’s blockbuster memoir, “Hillbilly Elegy,” first came out in the spring of 2016, it was celebrated as a coup d’oeil of an American group long abandoned by the national conversation: the white working class of the industrial Midwest and Appalachia. 

While Vance grew up here in this decaying Rust Belt town, he was also equally connected to the hills of Eastern Kentucky where he summered with his extended family. In his book, he detailed with brutal honesty how social isolation, poverty and despair impacted his family and others in the region.  Vance miraculously made it out, joined the Marines, and went on to graduate from Ohio State University and then Yale Law School.