As an elementary kid, I discovered my love of reading. Growing up in a small town with little to do (no mall, no Jump Street, no froyo or Starbucks), I found that books let me go somewhere else. I would ride my beloved blue bike downtown to the local public library and load up on books that let me escape. My dad outfitted my bike with a metal clip that would hold almost ten books by the likes of Judy Blume and Beverly Cleary and Madeline L'Engle. (I say almost because I remember the books often flying out of the clip, requiring me to scramble into the street to collect my wayward cargo.) By middle school, I had to settle for 4 or 5 books because they were getting bigger. But high school was where my reading life ended. I still read what was required (most of the time), but I was consumed in figuring out how to fit in, how to be someone else, how to be someone social and entertaining instead of someone who purposefully lost herself in books. I bought the right shoes and jeans, I tried hard to master the big bangs and hair flips of the 80s, and I watched endless videos on MTV. I wanted to be who everyone else was, and I lost who I wanted to be. College brought my reading self back out of hiding. Surrounded by other kids who liked reading and liked school, I was able to embrace my inner nerd again.
Eventually I majored in English and theater, and I've never looked back. I read constantly - sometimes for long stretches, like during a recent two and a half hour flight when I read all of The Color of Water. This memoir by an African American man who was raised by a white mother (who raised 12 kids - 12 - I can barely keep us with 2) was 287 pages, but it was fast and easy to read because he narrated his story as a series of interesting ups and downs leading him to accept who he was and who his mother was. I picked this one because people in my AP Language Facebook group (I told you I'm a nerd) recommended it as a great American memoir - they were right. I'm now 160 pages into Hillbilly Elegy, another memoir about a self-proclaimed hillbilly from Appalachia who explains how much he longed to be "normal" throughout his unpredictable and wild youth. (Spoiler alert: he eventually accepts his roots and becomes an author.) A former student told me about Hillbilly Elegy, saying that it helped him understand "Trump voters." That made me curious. These books both feature men who grew up in situations made difficult by a world that judges them for who they are. The thing is, I was a white, middle class, Midwestern girl with little working against me, yet as a kid, I also hungered to be more like everyone else. So while I'm not black, I'm not from poverty, and I'm not a hillbilly, I can relate to the idea of wanting a new identity and wanting to be something I'm not. Letting go of that drive is perhaps one of the hardest things we do in life. (Note: since I started writing this, I've also read and finished Where'd You Go Bernadette, a comedy/mystery novel with 326 pages, and 112 pages of Just Mercy, a memoir by a lawyer who works with inmates on death row to seek exonerations or stays of execution.)
Instructions Part 2 - Respond to the text, don't summarize. Discuss what stood out to you, how the information changed your thinking, what it made you wonder about. Include at least 2 text references in this section, including page citation, that are at least 50 pages apart, and make sure you explain the effect/value of the text sections you quote.
J.D. Vance writes Hillbilly Elegy with an interesting mix of fondness and criticism for the places he calls home and the people he calls family. Now a successful law school graduate and published author, he can track how he got there and recognize how unlikely his rise was, but part of making that rise came from recognizing that his roots, while teaching him lessons, did not have to define his future. As he explains from the beginning, "My primary aim is to tell a true story about what that problem [poverty/instability] feels like when you were born with it hanging around your neck" (Vance 14). But Vance does not give in to the psychological impacts of poverty; through perseverance and grit, he becomes what others might see as not only normal, but even successful, while also maintaining a link to his Appalachian roots. He describes growing up with his addict mother who keeps moving in with various boyfriends and husbands, and he glowingly portrays his foul-mouthed but devoted grandmother who offers him a stable home to escape to when he finally tires of following his mother.
Vance's life changes most profoundly when he enlists in the Marines and discovers a world of discipline and integrity, a level of discipline that he carries to college four years later and ends up excelling at Ohio State. Suddenly he doesn't have to wish to be someone else. He IS someone else, a fact that makes him feel separate from his friends in a small industrial town, and he begins to see the people around him in a new light. While he has gone on to college and is now preparing for Yale Law School, the people from his hometown are still trapped in a tragic cycle of poverty with no clear plan for change. He recognizes in their despair "a cultural movement in the white working class to blame problems on society or the government," and though he sympathizes with their sense of hopelessness, he understands that their need to blame someone offers no solutions (156). Instead, it keeps them stuck in an endless cycle of "detachment that has sapped so many" of any hope for the future (157). If society is rigged, how can someone from the lower rungs of the social ladder ever hope to climb?
Instructions Part 3 - Make a connection to an outside source based on a core idea in the book that caught your interest. Make sure you link the connection, discuss details from the source, and cite it along with the book.
But Vance found a way, and the most he offers in the way of solutions or advice is to accept one's past but to also set high expectations for the future and then work toward those expectations. That's a great lesson for all of us, and those expectations start by looking inside ourselves rather than looking at those around us. We can't set our expectations by wishing to be someone else. I can't wish to teach like Mr. Stroud or run like Coach Capeau. I have to set my goals based on my potential. Many current conversations discuss the role social media plays in the comparison game. When we see people we know traveling somewhere exotic, celebrating a high score, or just looking adorable, do we feel glad for them, or do we turn those glories into our failures? In an article in Psychology Today, Deborah Carr, Ph.D., says that "our desire to compare ourselves to others is a drive - one almost as powerful as thirst or hunger" (Carr). She advocates for "temporal comparison" as a replacement for comparison to others, describing the method as a way to compare ourselves to who we were in the past or to who we want to be in the future. If I see another runner posting a great race time that I'll never achieve (I just can't run five-minute miles - not one, let alone thirteen), I have to frame my goals around reasonable possibilities. Can I run eight-minute miles. Yes, if I work at it, and then I can feel satisfied when I meet that goal instead of forever reaching for the unattainable. Carr specifically notes the tragic suicide rate at some highly competitive colleges, where endless comparisons to others take their toll.
The problem is that changing our mindset, like Vance trying to change the dangerous habits of his youth, is an ongoing and constant process, one we have to consciously work at if we're caught in the comparison game. Carr offers three tips to help people: recognize that "perfection is an illusion," accept that we are on an "uneven playing field," and support friends rather than envying them (Carr). When we stop wishing to be someone else, we can learn to be our best selves.
Instructions Part 4 - Cite your sources. Use Purdue Owl to figure out citation format. Most of you will need book and electronic resource citations. Pay attention to italics, quotation marks, commas, etc.
Vance, J.D. Hillbilly Elegy. Harper Collins, 2016.
Carr, Deborah, Ph.D. "3 Reasons to Stop Comparing Yourself to Others." Psychology Today. 15 August
2008, https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/bouncing-back/201508/3-reasons-stop-comparing-
yourself-others. 1 Feb. 2018.
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