Important Excerpt from Hillbilly Elegy

The most crucial part of the book

With J.D. Vance having been named Trump’s running mate, everyone wants to know more about him. It feels like the easiest way to do that would be to read his New York Times bestseller, Hillbilly Elegy.

There’s just one problem: That book is like hundreds of pages long. It could take months to read.

Of course, there is the movie version directed by Ron Howard, but that is hours long. Who has that time?

Luckily, I don’t think you need to read the whole thing or watch the movie. In fact, there’s one crucial part of the book where I feel like you learn everything you need to know about J.D. Vance and what he overcame to find success. This is really the summation of the whole book in a few pages, and I highly recommend everyone read it to really understand who J.D. Vance is. Here’s that passage:

And this was it. We had nothing now. My mom had disappeared again, and it was just Mamaw and me, near starving. But I was determined to make a choice about my future — not just sit here and die. So I took the one rifle we had off the rack and searched the drawers for ammo. One bullet was all I could find.

“What is it, J.D.?” Mamaw asked as she sat in her rocking chair.

“We’re going to eat tonight,” I told her, keeping back my tears.

So I went out onto our barren land, hoping to find something — anything — to keep us going.

And there it was. A lone rabbit sitting in a field. So I took that rifle and aimed, lining up what was the literally the last shot for me and my family.

And I fired.

The rabbit skittered away unharmed, the echoing gunshot an elegy for me and my family — the last hope fading into silence. I reflected on all the choices that led us here — starving and out of luck — and stared sullenly at where the bullet had impacted. My final act was just a bang and fury that produced nothing — a symbol of all we were.

But then I noticed something. Out of the ground where the bullet had hit came a bubbling crude. I approached closer and confirmed what I thought I saw. This was black gold. Texas tea. Oil, that is.

I ran to our little hovel. “Mamaw! We’s millionaires!” I cried.

Mamaw looked at me skeptically. “What do you mean?”

“I found oil on our land!”

Mamaw smiled. She grabbed me firmly by the shoulders, looked me straight in the eyes, and said, “J.D., you have to move away from here. California is the place you oughta be.”

So that day, we packed up the truck and moved to Beverly (Hills, that is). We came to a new world of swimming pools and movie stars. And our old Appalachian ways conflicting with their elitist ways led to many misadventures in this new world of opportunity. And while on the outside it might seem “funny” to others, the laughter never quite hid the pain that was still buried deep inside.

It’s a powerful story. There were some charges J.D. Vance had stolen parts of his story from another source, but no real evidence of that was produced. Anyway, I hope you found this excerpt enlightening. Y’all come back now, ya hear?