With frank honesty, J.D. Vance, author of the best-selling book "Hillbilly Elegy," spoke Wednesday in the student union at Bowling Green State University about his life growing up in Appalachia and the systemic problems stemming from poverty, educational inequalities and drug abuse.
Persistence, resilience and grit are the Common Experience themes at BGSU this year and Vance's memoir "Hillbilly Elegy" is the year's Common Read book, reflecting those concepts. The student union was filled with a capacity crowd of over a thousand.
Having written the book as a 31-year-old, Vance's life has been packed with experiences that make him wish at times he had "stopped to smell the daisies." The contrasts between his Yale Law School education and his youth, growing up on the poor side of rust belt Middletown, Ohio, are stark. Out of high school he spent four years in the Marines then went directly to college at Ohio State. After law school he worked in the Senate and moved on to the business world. The picture Vance paints of life in his hometown is tough, with characters and stories that are likable and loving but sometimes violent, even while trying to do good.
[For more on this story by ROGER LAPOINTE, go to http://www.sent-trib.com/news/...69-a037d6efe739.html]
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