A Michigan Hillbilly Elegy

I grew up in trailer parks across Oakland County: Rochester Hills, Auburn Hills, and Brandon Township. Some of my fondest memories were riding my bike through close-knit streets and going to the community pool with friends. I felt a sense of belonging there. Those were the early years, before my life fell apart, before my mom brought violent men into my life, before she became addicted to drugs, before she went to jail.

In J.D. Vance’s story, I see my own. He was born into a troubled environment in Middletown, Ohio, a town filled with families who had migrated from the hills of Kentucky in search of a better life but often brought their struggles with them. His mother also battled drug addiction and bad relationships with men, creating an unstable home life marked by frequent moves, constant fighting, and abuse. Vance’s grandparents became the stable figures in his life, providing him with a sense of security amid the chaos.

Despite the stability his grandparents offered, the broader culture of poverty, neglect, and low expectations in Middletown affected him deeply. Vance’s memoir “Hillbilly Elegy” delves into these experiences, exploring the generational trauma, the struggles of the working class in Rust Belt America, and how people can break free from the cycle of poverty and dysfunction.

My mom telling me, “Amber, you shouldn’t really be that upset over the divorce. He wasn’t your real father anyway,” is one of my earliest memories. I was 7 and sitting on the bathtub of my mother’s jacuzzi in our luxury double-wide trailer. My mind was reeling with questions I didn’t really want the answer to. “I know divorce is hard, Amber. But we will get through this together.”

My mother had me at what would be considered a young age by today’s standards, but in the late 1980s seemed relatively normal. She was 22, and I was the product of a one-night stand. Before I could form my own memories, she met stepdad No. 1. He was an ordinary guy, nothing to write home about, but emotionally and mentally unstable. I wasn’t devastated by their divorce; I was more relieved, but now I was bewildered that the man I’d known for the past seven years, was not, in fact, my dad, and that I was the bastard child of an unknown man who didn’t seem to want me. If she could lie to me about that, what else was she capable of? After that, I didn’t trust anyone.

Her marriage to stepdad No. 1 didn’t end in violence or yelling; it ended quietly. I think my mom just got bored and wanted chaos. Once they were done, he left my life like he never existed, and I realized that’s how easily someone can be replaced and how little they cared about you in the first place. My mother shortly after fell for a man she met online. She moved us, after knowing him for only a few months, to St. Augustine, Florida. I never met him in person, and she only spent two weekends with him, never getting to know him really, before packing up 8-year-old me and moving across the country, which I find absolutely absurd now as a mother myself.