Mildred Armstrong Kalish (1922–2018)

I don't think I sent a comment on your last book, Hillbilly Elegy, but I thought it was very enlightening about a subculture that I lived in and around my whole life. My husband actually came from the same area in Kentucky as J.D. Vance and had a somewhat different experience but also "got above his raisin' " as we said in Kentucky and southern West Virginia.

Now this month's book, Little Heathens, is a look at another U.S. subculture that I could identify with even more closely even though, on the surface, it didn't seem to fit my experience at all. I grew up in small town West Virginia, much more a coal mining than a farming area, but many of the depression era values described in this book certainly pertained to my family. My experience of "use up, make do, do without," calm acceptance of hardship, and subdued emotions was much more the norm in my family and others around me than the violence and fierce clannishness of Hillbilly Elegy.… (mais)