author j.d. vance. followed by prime minister's questions. later, washington u.s. senate debate in washington state. ♪ announcer: this week on "q&a," author j.d. vance. mr. vance discusses his best-selling book "hillbilly elegy: a memoir of a family and culture in crisis." ♪ brian: j.d. vance, did you have any idea, when you wrote this book, that it would be a huge bestseller? "hillbilly elegy." j.d.: no, i didn't. i definitely did not expect it to have quite the response that it's had. brian: why do you think it has? j.d.: well, a couple of things. so one, i think, just the weird nature of the election this year

has caused a lot of people to ask, who are these white working class voters who are often supporting donald trump who just seem to be making waves in a lot of different ways. and i think, second, i shed a light, partially because of the election and partially because people are just curious. i shed a light on an area of the country that people did not know a whole lot about. so hopefully, i have shown them a little bit about what folks are like in this region of the world -- the good and the bad. brian: where were you born? j.d.: so, i was born in southern ohio. a steel town called middletown, ohio. which we always said it was "middletown" because it was in between cincinnati and dayton and that was the most impressive thing about it. but i spent a lot of time in eastern kentucky because my grandparents, who i grew up with, were kind of appalachian diaspora. so, they came from eastern kentucky coal country and worked in southern ohio steel mills, which is kind of a common story in that area. brian: can you paint a picture of middletown and jackson, kentucky? j.d.: sure, so jackson, kentucky is just pretty small. it's got about 6,000 people in it. pretty impoverished.

30%-40% poverty rates. the opioid epidemic has really hit jackson hard. and so that is a big part of what is going on in these areas. not a whole lot of people working. obviously, the coal -- the loss of coal jobs has hit this area pretty hard. so in some ways, it is a pretty tough area -- a tough area to grow up in. middletown is in some ways, it was supposed to be the economic savior. in a lot of ways, it was. because it brought my grandparents from eastern kentucky and provided them a good wage. but a lot of the problems they thought they were escaping in jackson have just presented themselves in middletown, ohio, too. so you see a lot of the same problems that exist in jackson, from the family breakdown to exist in jackson, from the heroin epidemic to homelessness, joblessness now characteristic of this part of the country. i wouldn't say it's destitute, just because there's still a lot going on in southwestern ohio, so folks are still able to find decent jobs. the poverty rate isn't quite as high, and unemployment rate is not quite as high. but for folks like us, it's

pretty similar, right? there are a lot of the social ills in southern ohio that do not look that different from jackson. brian: so "hillbilly elegy" -- are there hills in both places? j.d.: yes, but they are bigger in jackson. [chuckling] j.d.: middletown is in a plateau. so if you have ever been to , cincinnati, which is the middletown,city to it is very hilly, almost mountainous, but not like kentucky and tennessee. brian: when did you leave the area permanently? j.d.: i left in 2003 to join the military. i was in the marines. this was right after we invaded iraq. i enlisted in april of 2003.

i believe we invaded in march of 2003. in north carolina. spent a of time in iraq. the war was the engine that brought me out of where i grew up. i never lived there for more than a few months at a time. brian: what years were you in the marines? j.d.: 2003-2007. i did a four-year tour in the marines. i went to ohio state for a couple of years. i majored in political science and philosophy at ohio state. i was in yale from 2010-2013. i pretty much went straight there. i graduated late summer from ohio state and i couldn't start and the next law school term had already started. this was a chunk of time where i stayed with my aunt and uncle. brian: when did you go to san francisco?

j.d.: 2015. so about 1.5 years ago. brian: what area of law are you in? j.d.: i am an investor in san francisco and i practiced law in boston. we have a big washington, d.c., office. i did a lot of regulatory work in washington, d.c. and i left. for the technology world in san francisco i ran a company for a short time in san francisco. now i am at an investment firm. brian: when did you get married? j.d.: 2014. brian: any kids? j.d.: no. two very large dogs, but no kids. [chuckling] brian: has your mother read the book? j.d.: she has. yes, she has. and, you know, it is top, right? it is not necessarily the most flattering.

it is the sort of thing that, you know, when mama and i talked about it for the first time -- it was a few weeks ago that we really talked about the book and what was in it and the story that it told. it was one of the best conversations i had with my mom in 15 years. it is hard for my mom to recognize the way her life affected me and my sisters. you think a lot of these things are your fault and one of the things i hope to do in the book, that hopefully i did an ok job a, was to show this in multi-generational context. that some of the problems i had, this was not all mom's fault. in some ways, this was an inheritance of the family. it was just as hard on her as it was on me.

brian: how much did alcohol play a role in your mom's life? j.d.: my mom did not have an alcohol problem, but her dad was an alcoholic who quit drinking when i was born. i thought of him as an almost perfect guy, never having a temper. but he was a mean drunk. before i was born. so it was interesting to compare , to the opinion i had. the juxtaposition. you know, drugs was a big part of mom's life. and a big part of my families story. she, like a lot of people, got a taste for prescription narcotics. it dominated our lives and affected our lives in a lot of different ways. it is something i am proud and happy to say that it is something she has gotten it under control and things are going pretty well right now. but it is a story that is too common, where drugs move in and mess up the families.

brian: what is the story where she tried to commit suicide in a car? j.d.: when i was maybe 10 or 11 years old, she had recently lost her job. i did not know at the time, but that is really when she started to use drugs. her marriage was falling apart. we were living in a rural part of the state, as her marriage was falling apart, and we were moving to middletown. she crashed a car into a telephone pole. she went to the hospital. you know, she tried to commit suicide. it was very hard for us to hear. it was hard for me to hear, as her son. you always wonder, "what could i have done differently?" you wonder that as a grown man or as a kid. that is a big part of growing up in that environment. you are always wondering, what

could i've done to make things a little bit better? brian: how old are you? j.d.: 32. brian: how old is your mother? j.d.: 55. brian: i have a string of names here i want to ask you about. let's start with, who was bob? j.d.: a stepfather i had. my mother's third husband. bob was and still is my legal father. what happened was when i was about five or six years old, my biological father decided he would give me up for adoption for complicated reasons. he and i are close now and we have reconnected. bob became my legal father and i took his name. i took his name. himmel,e james david

which you will notice is not my name anymore. like a lot of the men we were exposed to, he did not stick around. he did not become my dad. he was a guy in the picture and he left after a couple years. brian: who was chip? j.d.: a boyfriend my mom stayed with for a while and he was a reasonable guy. he was the sort of classic -- you know, he worked as a police officer, with a lot of the attitudes that were common. he had some connection to the south, because of his mannerisms and the way he conducted himself. he was a nice guy. he drank a lot. he wasn't abusive to me. but you know, at real story of a lot of these guys it is they would come in and they would go out. it was not that they were bad guys. they were just not people you can depend upon and that was the lesson we grew up on.

you could not really depend on these guys. brian: who was steve? j.d.: steve came after chip. again, he was a nice guy. my sister and i always said we wanted mom to marry steve, but after a year, he was gone. brian: who was matt? j.d.: my favorite. probably my favorite of all of my stepdad's or moms boyfriends. a young guy. he was a good human being, cared a lot about me and my sister. at the worst part of our lives, when mom's addiction problem landed her in rehab, matt was the person who took care of us and a lot of ways. checking in on us, making sure we had food to eat, making sure we want to school, when there was not an adult presence in our lives. matt and i still keep in contact, actually. afterand matt broken up

eight few years but matt and i are still pretty close and he is doing well. i am happy we are keeping an touch. brian: ken? j.d.: an interesting story. maybe that isn't the right word. one day, mom told me she was getting married. i figured she was getting married to matt, but she was actually getting married to this man i had never met, ken. who was her boss. i learned she had started a relationship with him and we would be moving in. i was moved from matt's house. ken, again, was just one of these people who would come into our lives and go. brian: how many times did your mom get married? j.d.: five times over the course of her life. four times over the course of my

life. brian: is she married now? j.d.: good question. i believe the answer is no. brian: what does she do for a living? j.d.: i believe she takes care of the elderly. she works in various -- basically, a home health nurse. it is good for her. good for her because she is clean and she is working hard. brian: who was me-maw? j.d.: she was my mother's mother. a lot of ways the savior of my home life. it is pretty common in these big eastern kentucky families. her reach was broader than a lot of people's grandparents were, so she was the person who made sure that i had a safe and stable home when my mother could not provided, making sure i had exposure to the life lessons and the people i needed to have exposure to to make sure i did not fall through the cracks.

and you know, she was this gun-toting, had 19 handguns, cussed up a storm. she was not the sort of stay-at-home in bad weather grandmother. she was a powerful and perceptive figure that made sure that i had the exposure to the things that i needed to ignore to have a good life. brian: pa-paw? j.d.: her husband. and even though because of his drinking, they were separated, they never got divorced. i think they just really did not believe in it. pa-paw, we went through the revolving door of maternal partners, but he was the one man we could rely on and the best father anybody could ask for.

when he died, i stood up at his funeral and said he was the best father anyone could ask for. he played that role in our lives and he would fix up a car, provide us extra spending money, that was his role. he stood in for the father that my sister and i did not have. again, he was this gruff old guy from eastern kentucky. indidn't in some ways fit in southern ohio. he was more comfortable in kentucky. he was just a great guy. brian: what is "mountain dew mouth"? j.d.: a term that people give to the dental problems that happen when you have too much sugary soda. it is not something that people like to talk about and people are unfairly stereotyped for having terrible teeth. it is true that, among poor families, kids have dental problems because they are given sugary soda before they should

be. so i believe i was a baby when pepsi was put into my bottle and my grandma said, get that out, it showed that a lot of us didn't know. we did not know what we were supposed to do. we did not know the behaviors we had to have to prevent premature dental problems. it's not that the people who put the pepsi in my bottle were bad people, they just did not know. luckily, my grandma did. brian: what is a hillbilly? what is an elegy? j.d.: a hillbilly is somebody who has a connection to appellation or fewer from south ohio. southernyou are from ohio. you either have family or a special kinship to the region. it is a pejorative. if somebody used it outside of the family, i would be offended.

but in our family, we use it as a term of endearment. ma-maw said, nobody can call you a hillbilly except me. an elegy is a sad song or poem. in some ways, this is the sad story of people who have come from appalachia. this is the story of them when they were 15-20 and it has not panned out. their family has a love the problems they had hoped they would not have when they escaped from eastern kentucky poverty. j.d.: a combination of me and my publisher agent. it is something we talked a lot about. it is not something i was particularly attached to, at

first. elegy is not a word i would use growing up. the more i thought about what it meant, the more i recognized that it really is the story of my family, these hillbillies, those that came from it eastern kentucky to southern ohio and the sadness that characterize their lives. brian: you said there was something missing. i mean, we are not getting what is in this book because of? there is language that would remove the bark from the tree. [laughing] j.d.: there is a lot of colorful language and other cuss words. someone once told me that my ma-maw had the mouth of a sailor, only worse. i don't try to hide that or filter that. it is the wave we spoke. -- the way we spoke.

brian: what do you think they would think if they read the book? j.d.: i think they would love the book. i tried to write a book they would be proud of and ma-maw was thatopen about the fact there were problems. she was, i say this again and again, she was very perceptive and recognize that people did not like to talk about these problems, thinking that you do not want to open up family history or talk about these problems. she recognized that impulse was not necessarily super-wise because she recognized that you had to talk about these problems in order to really understand them and try to fix them. the people who come up to me and say that my ma-maw, pa-paw were heroes, my sister is a hero, i think that is what i wanted to accomplish in this book. what i wanted to show people. when you grow up in this kind of

life, you need a lot of people to play a heroic role in your life, in order to have a chance. this is the story of how they impacted my life in a lot of positive ways. brian: where is your sister? j.d.: in ohio. brian: married? j.d.: yes. i think in our own ways, we have it each escaped the statistics that say that we should not be able to live a happy life and have an intact family or a decent and steady job. my sister and i have both overcome that in a lot of ways. --an: let me read this brian: what is that about? j.d.: family honor and family

loyalty are really important, when you grow up like this. you are a poor kid and do not have a lot to hang your hat on. we are taught from these stories our answer and uncles told us, tothe way we are taught never let insults to your family or mother go unpunished. it is important to defend the family honor and that you are part of the family story. these insults are mild insults, the sorts of things that, in a corporate boardroom or in a successful 21st-century marriage, it doesn't make sense to respond to these insults with hot temper, fists, or violence, but when you grew up in a community like that -- when you grow up in a family like mine, you are really taught that is what you have do do. brian: you say --

brian: how much or how many others were like that description of bob? j.d.: not a whole lot fit all of the stereotypical boxes. a thing i try to write about is that a lot of the stereotypes are not totally fair and people are, justifiably, sensitive about being stereotyped as just -- just a "dumb redneck." hopefully, that is not the picture i am painting of my family. some are not as extreme as bob, but i try to point out that a lot of the perceived problem's problems do not

exist everywhere, but they are certainly there. the problems exist at a disproportionate level in our society and we have to be honest about it. j.d.: yeah. the tough thing about these areas is that most of the people who are out of work are trying to find a good job, they are really trying to get ahead, applying, putting out resumes, talking to friends and family, and you can help to feel -- but to feel bad for them. on the other hand, there are people who are not working and don't seem to care that they are not working. but what is interesting, is they are not aware of it, right? so the people who are not working do not call themselves lazy. virtues ofed the hard-working, even as they don't work. you see these people working hard and trying to get ahead in the other people who are not working hard and are not trying to get ahead.

and both of those people exist and if you live in a community like mine, you cannot miss both sides of the coin. brian: my sister and i -- j.d.: that is exactly right. so, the chicken man is a guy who chickens just like people stood where he came from. a.m. -- he was in eastern kentucky transplant with chickens in his backyard. when one got old or sick, he would cut it up for me. ring its neck. there are a lot of modern

americans who are creating that life and it was looked down upon back then. it is one of the many ways where my grandparents felt like they were outsiders in this ohio town, as eastern kentucky transplants that many would call "hillbillies." there were also the relatively upper-class ohioans who were not comfortable with the chicken man moving into their communities and having certain habits that came with them. brian: how often did you see people hungry? j.d.: not a lot. definitely not a lot of that extreme poverty. you saw that a little bit in jackson. certainly the adults were aware of it. as a kid, i was not aware of it. i did remember people talking about it. in middletown, people with not that much money were not so destitute that they could not afford food. i never got the sense that they were truly desperate.

brian: how many were poor? j.d.: a big chunk. it is hard to put in exact number on it. obviously people mean different things by the word "poor." i would say a quarter of the population was pretty close to the poverty line. did not have a ton of money, and maybe they were worried about how they would put clothes on their kid's back and struggling in different ways. worried about school supplies. brian: you talk about religion. your own beliefs? you were a believer, not a believer, people around you were -- give us some background. j.d.: it is very religious, in self-identification.

they will say they are evangelical, but people are not going to church, identifying as christian, but not going to a traditional bricks and mortar institution. i think it is very important because as i write in the book, having connection to the church community, which i first got through my dad's church, was important. it worries me that in these areas, sense -- since i have reengaged in my religious faith and it worries me that you see people who identify as christian but do not have connection to the church, because i do not think you are getting the benefits that come along with your faith if you are not engaging in the week-two-week way. brian: what is the hillbilly highway?

jd: -- that it is the roadway brought people into indiana, ohio, michigan. it is just a road. it is u.s. route 23, which ran through eastern kentucky to i think all the way through columbus. there were a bunch of people who drive along that highway, moving permanently, in search for a better life or wage. but they are also -- what is interesting is that that was also the way people got home on holidays. and so it is hillbilly highway because you are driving in these areas and you would the in eastern kentucky with license plates from michigan and ohio. that is the roads these people traveled. brian: what is the difference

between jackson, kentucky, and middletown, ohio. j.d.: jackson, kentucky is in coal country. as the crows fly, it is 100 or 110 miles. in terms of driving, it is 3.5 hours. that is mostly because with the mountain roads, you cannot drive that asked on them. they are real kelly. real hilly. it is difficult to get a good speed. it feels further away than it actually is. it is a place where you can make a good weekend trip. it takes a while to get there. brian: how do people game the food stamp system? j.d.: there are a couple of ways. so this is something i saw when i was a cashier at a local gas rate -- grocery store. one way is that they buy soda and they sell it to their neighbors for a cash discount so that allows them to sort of

transfer food stamps into cash. they will sell the food stamps directly. another thing i saw was people coming in and buying a lot of food and soda with food stamps and everything else is on a separate check. there is a recognition that they are not depending on the stamps in the way that was intended and it breeds resentment in your neighbors. because people see people who need those and they do not take advantage of the system and they see people who do take advantage of the system and they get frustration towards those who are gaming the system and they are frustrated with the government, who they feel is not monitoring the benefits as well as they should. there is an interesting feeling of people who recognize that the assistance is needed, but are upset with those who abuse it. brian: you said you had an epiphany as a young boy?

do you remember that? j.d.: i had many. one of those epiphanies it is that i sort of recognized that maybe all of the things that folks -- meaning especially the government -- were trying to do to help communities like mine, maybe the help was not necessarily going to wear was needed, right? so this is what i write about with the welfare system, you would see that people are using the system well and others are not using the system as honestly as they should. brian: you said you hated school and you hated home more. and when you talk about home, which home are you talking about? j.d.: the one with mom, where we felt like we were constantly cycling from boyfriend to boyfriend to husband and it was

unstable, chaotic, there was intense fighting and domestic violence in one direction or another and i hated the instability, feeling as though i could never get comfortable and that i was constantly moving. you could come home from school and find out that you were moving from a house that you liked to a house of a stranger. that is what i disliked the most about home. brian: school? why did you hate school? j.d.: i didn't see the point of it and there was not a clear connections that now exists in my mind between education and opportunities. the people who did well in school did not necessarily make a whole lot out of themselves and they were not having good opportunities, so it was hard to believe that school mattered that much.

and partially the reason i hated it was because it is hard to go from a home where you are unhappy to a school, where everything is sunshine and rainbows. the unhappiness from home sometimes makes you sick, stressed out, worried about going home, and it colors the way you approach school. it makes you not especially happy to be at school even if it is better than the home that you came from. brian: you have a degree from ohio state and yale. what do you think of the school she went to back and middletown -- so now what do you think of the schools you went to back in middletown, ohio and kentucky? j.d.: i think they could do more to help poor kids and i do not think it was a problem of mine growing up. there was so much going on and it was tough to focus. i would like to see the focus on recognizing the problem that existed in homes like mine and

trying to anticipate those problems and maybe counteract them. i'm cognizant of the fact that it is hard to make up for a negative home life and we really had teachers that tried hard, and a lot of ways. brian: what was the relationship with ma-maw and your mother? book,as you read in the -maw was not afraid to say that she disagreed with a less -- a lifestyle choice. she was not afraid to tell my mother about her decisions. i think he she was her best friend -- i think she was her best friend, but not be enabling kind of friend.

brian: you have lived in columbus. could you ever go back to hill country? j.d.: i definitely could. brian: would you? j.d.: it is hard to imagine going back to a rural place. the opportunities are not there. that is why people, like me, leave. it is hard to imagine what kind of job i would do. the brain drain is not because we do not like our home anymore, but you have to have higher-skills jobs. to really support an economy that has lost school graduates and so forth. brian: you tell a story in the asked you someone who if you went to yale and you dodged it. j.d.: someone asked me and i felt, in that moment, that i would identify as an ivy leaguer, and i decided to be a

southern ohio boy and i said that my girlfriend went to yale. the reason i said this is because the upward mobility and all of this relocation creates conflict in our mind. because ithis woman would have felt like a bit of a class traitor. i don't want to gloss over the fact that, when you go to yale, you become culturally alienated from the home that you grew up in, but i think it is possible, to maintain your roots and maintain some connection to where you come from it just requires a little bit of conscientiousness. brian: one thing missing from your book is pictures. are some available? j.d.: i am working on getting a seeite up so people can some of the characters they are reading about. it is something that did not come up. i wonder why we didn't think to

stick some photos in. i definitely regret it, in hindsight, because people identify with ma-maw. it is something i am working on, so people who are fans of the book, please hang in there. i will have photos on a website soon. brian: what is "hillbilly justice?" j.d.: a sense that there are certain wrongs in the world and it is a combination with vigilantism. a feeling that you do not need the law. sometimes, you should take care of business yourself. my grandmother told me the story of a man who was accused of sexually assaulting a woman and they found him facedown in a local river with 16 bullet holes in his back. in the paper ran a short story. "man found dead, foul play suspected."

with all those bullet holes in your back, you would certainly suspect that foul play would be expected. me-maw laughed at this. she said, this is what you do, when somebody wrongs your family. brian: your ma-maw came close to killing somebody. j.d.: somebody was trying to steal the family cow. she went outside and grabbed a rifle, shooting a man. the other man drove away, leaving his comrade bleeding at the family farm. ma-maw went up to him it and she wanted to finish the guy off, raising the rifle at point-blank range. the older brother said that the

man should face the legal consequences. she felt passionately that it was wrong for the poor to steal from one another, that it was the ultimate moral sin and she thought this guy committed in and even at 12-years-old, she was not afraid to take care of this. brian: you say she was a violent non-drunk and pa-paw was a nonviolent drunk. j.d.: they both could be violent. there is a famous and troubling story of my grandpa, he had gotten drunk and my grandma said, if you ever get drunk again, i will kill you. a couple weeks later, he came home drunk and she poured gasoline on him and set him on fire and luckily one of my aunts spring into action and prevented him from suffering any serious he escaped with

mild burns. she was not a "take it laying down" sort of type. it exacerbated the violence, maybe made it a little worse. it is funny, or troubling, depending on your perspective. she said, you got a detail wrong. and i thought, oh no, there is a mistake in my book the worst thing imaginable. remember it i wasn't gasoline, it was lighter fluid. i said, ok, that is ok to mess that up. it doesn't change the nature of the story. stuff like that really happened and it was a chaotic place to grow up. brian: you said your sister was very attractive. where did she get that? do you know? j.d.: i think a lot of the women in our family are beautiful. if you like an old photos of my

grandma, in her hey-day, she was a stunner. i think my sister probably got it from all sides. from her mom and dad. she was a beautiful young girl and it goes back to family honor and pride. i am proud of her for not just being a good person and being smart, but also because i thought she was beautiful. brian: how much education do the people in your family have? j.d.: i am the only person with a four year degree. my uncle, he, i believe he got a four-year degree later in life. my uncle jimmy. he and i are the only one with any significant college education. my mom may have an associates degree in nursing. i know, only person even going down to third and

fourth cousins, who has a right to it degree. -- graduate degree. brian: when did you first get the idea to write the book? j.d.: i was a law student and i was bothered by the question of why there weren't more like me at yale, why there were more poor kids like me. i wanted to ask and answer that question. and that is really what the book is about. brian: what did you do about it? you said you wanted to write a book and this is published by harper and is on the bestseller list. j.d.: it is funny. it actually did come together in a serendipitous way. i did not expected to happen. i have a professor who is an author who wrote famous books

and they said that i should publish a book. i said, i will think about it and i wrote it, not thinking about if it we get published. a few months later, i was still in law school and she connected me with some friends of hers in the publishing industry and i had a book deal. excuse me. that is how that happened. that is how it happened, she connected me with the right people. those people made sure i got a book deal let him was able to publish the book and publish it well. things have gone pretty well, so far. brian: that author, amy, was here and talked about her international book and she was the author of the tiger mom book, which was so successful. you showed up at yale.

financial aid office. j.d.: they were saying i was getting aid for the kids that were not especially wealthy and i would receive the maximum amount, because i was one of the poorer kids and it was one of the first times that being poor paid so well. it goes to show that these pretty elite universities try to recruit, but it is hard to pierce the expectations. the expectation i had even as a relatively well-educated guy that already got into yale law school, i had no idea it would be so cheap to go. i thought i would have to take out a $200,000 loan but at the end of the day, i probably incurred less debt, because i came from a family that did not have a lot of money. brian: how many jobs did you have when you went to ohio state? j.d.: it oscillated. i had a couple, at one point. i had three.

did not want to incur a lot of debt. i wanted to have spending money. at the marine corps, i got used to not worrying about money and i liked it. i like not worrying about having a beer with friends. i had jobs i was lucky to have, the jobs were rewarding and interesting, it you do not have as much time to spend on your studies, you certainly don't have as much time to spend on sleeping. brian: what was your gpa? j.d.: 4.0. i did well. i learned the lessons of the marine corps well. i definitely did very well at ohio state and tried. i realized that was my shot and i could not mess it up, if i wanted to go to a good law school, wanted to have good opportunities, i had to do well

at ohio state. i studied hard and i did well. brian: 4.0? j.d.: maybe a 3.95? i don't remember. i remember maybe i got one be the entire time i was there. brian: how did you get into yale? j.d.: a combination of luck and the l-sat score. i did well. i had good grades at ohio state. maybe the admissions committee just saw something. maybe they like the marine corps background? i didn't apply to yale or harvard. i thought there was no chance i would get in. i only apply to those places on the encouragement of a friend. brian: to quote you -- "i am a hill person." still? j.d.: yes.

i think what a hill person is, it is about humility, loving the land where you came from, most of all the recognition that the value of someone is not in the credentials they have, not in the job they have, not how much money they make. it is how they treat the person around them. that is one of the advantages of being a hell person that i hope i will never let go of because that is something important and has served me pretty well. brian: what is the story when you are writing in the car with your mother and you got out of the car in ran away? put that into context? j.d.: i was with my mom and something bad had happened. i remember she was very apologetic and asked me to take a ride with her. she lost her temper, she drove her car really fast and she told me she would crash the car and kill us both. obviously, i was scared. i was 11 or 12.

what i do not understand, i took off my seatbelt and hopped into the back of the car. as soon as she pulled over the car, i took the opportunity to bolt. i got to the house and i asked a woman to call the police. about the time they came, my mother had located the house and she was arrested. that was obviously traumatic to see her get arrested. it was romantic to have that experience in the first place. it the worst part was that invited the state into our lives in a way that was uncomfortable and that i regretted a great deal. brian: did anybody in your life not like the book? j.d.: nobody has personally told me they did not like the book. , the folksrybody

from eastern kentucky and southern ohio, they recognize the good and the bad in this book. what i have been really grateful for in depreciated are the folks who said thank you for portraying us in a positive but honest light. for being honest about the problems but also being compassionate about them. so it reinforces my beliefs that there is a real hope that we can talk about these problems openly and our community. willi said, in the hope we be able to change direction and make things a little bit better in the future. brian: what do you consider to be elite? j.d.: a cultural disposition,

typically eating at certain restaurants, having certain habits, vacationing in certain places, obviously there is an element of wealth. credentials. there is geography. so if i can sum of the elites, people who grew up different from where i grew up around. brian: how do you view government? j.d.: i am a conservative guy, i believe government has a role to play in addressing these sort of problems. i am not the sort of guy who thinks we should do away with forgovernment assistance the poor. but aisles and respect and understand that government activity can both harm some of these communities, great negative incentives that have to be over, on the one hand and also that it can address

problems without really andeciating the nature of understanding the problem so i would like to see government think a little bit harder about how we can teach lower income parents how to interact with their children better. that is something we do nothing about because we tend to think about these problems as economic and income. i do think government suspiciously but also as an entity that has so some role in addressing these problems. brian: have you been back to middletown high school to talk about your life and this book? j.d.: i have not been back since his book was published. -- this book was published. i have had some contact with the administrators and i hope to go back. brian: what would you tell somebody who had the same experience you had? how do you get to ohio state? how do you get to gail law school?

-- yale law school? j.d.: you have to recognize that life is unfair and you have to see that unfairness and recognize that, with hard work and support for your family, you can overcome this and i always tell kids who were in circumstances that were similar to mine is to never give up on yourself. that is the worst of all possible worlds. how do you get to yale and get a nice job? all of those things? at the end of the day, work really hard, find mentors who will support you, guide you through the unfamiliar territories and unfamiliar networks. that you have to be lucky. this is a thing i try to impress upon people. this will not be solved entirely

by personal agency. i'm not an "up from your bootstraps" kind of guy. i am not the kind of guy who said i am going to work hard and make it and went ahead and did it. i had a lot of help and i want to get more people to help. brian: how did you meet your wife? j.d.: it she is the daughter of immigrants. she is different from me, but i see all the same values that i admire in the hill people in her. a love of country, faith and hard work. it is not what kind of job you have or where you went to school that gives you values. it is how you treat people. so i really fed into her family pretty well. brian: where is her family from? j.d.: india. brian: you wrote --

brian: what is the eraser story? j.d.: i was in iraq and we went to do assistance to a local school. i remember we were giving out school supplies and i gave this eraser to a boy. and he grabbed it from me and aloft so big and held it like a trophy.

went running back to his family. i was looking at his environment and his life and i realized that he had it a lot worse than i did. when you grow up, like i did, it is easy to believe that the deck is stacked against you and irene you, and iainst realized that i am lucky and i should start appreciating some of the things my grandparents did for me, instead of being resentful. brian: when books like this are successful, something triggers it. what was it? j.d.: donald trump helped. there was this broad recognition that people want to understand this group of voters who are voting for him. brian: who in the media triggered the interest? conservative,ican rod dreher published a kind review and published a long

interview on his blog, giving me a chance to articulate the most important lessons from the book, that poverty and inequality are both structural, but also cultural problems. brian: how did you know him? i did not really know him. a friend really liked the book and he blogged about it. brian: how many printings? j.d.: 250,000. brian: how many originally? j.d.: 10,000. brian: when did they know they would have to print again? jd: i don't know exactly when they knew, but it was right after the interview was published on american conservative. it made us realize the demand was greater than we thought it was going to be. they went after a second and third printing right away and it was off to the races from there.

brian: any intention of another book? j.d.: never say never. brian: most significant change? j.d.: i have a lot of strangers who know a lot about me and i did not necessarily want them to. i am a private person and i do not like telling personal stories and it is awkward to know that so many know so much about me, but the book justifies my willingness to be forthright about my personal history. brian: a lot of people like you say, i am a private person. how can you call yourself a private person and write a love this stuff about your family? -- the reason i say i was a private person is i was so uncomfortable with it and i had to be pushed to be more honest and forthright. i was pushed by my wife, my

--nt, everybody will stop everybody. i was pushed and i had to tell the stories. the bargain i struck with myself is that i think the story told is one that needed to be. is jackson all white? j.d.: not all-white. brian: where does the picture come from? j.d.: i don't know. it is a stock image. i think it is a getty image the publisher used to put together the cover. i do not know exactly where it is from. my guess is that it is from western north carolina. brian: in the book is "hillbilly elegy." thank you for joining us.

j.d.: thank you for having me. ♪ [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] announcer: for free transcripts are to give his shore comments, visit us at q&a.org. asgrams are also available c-span podcasts. ♪ announcer: if you liked this program here are some others you might enjoy. author nancy isenberg on her book "white trash," which takes a historic look at the class system. his, a writer writes about