Last fall, I read the memoir Hillbilly Elegy and I struggled with its view of poverty. The man suffered, but suffering does not necessarily make us wise. I both recognized that he was reporting his personal experience, and felt concerned that his view of his own life was limited by his selfish political point of view. This morning, an essay by Chris Offut, “I Will Always Write About Appalachia” helped me understand why.

“The most recent addition to these false accounts of Appalachian life is the widely read book Hillbilly Elegy, the author of which grew up in the decaying Rust Belt town of Middletown, Ohio. Nevertheless, he blames his personal difficulties on the culture of Appalachia.”

The writing in Vance’s memoir isn’t anything special, but the story is emotionally compelling. Vance grew up in a violent, loud, drug-afflicted, under-educated, and sometimes poor household, but he had people who genuinely loved him and cared for him, even if those people had their flaws and were not necessarily his parents. I love the quote from a teacher at his former high school: “They want us to be shepherds to these kids. But no one wants to talk about the fact that many of them are raised by wolves.” And then . . .

I began to consider stories I knew best from my own family and from teaching in public schools. I don’t know much about Appalachia, but I do know something about poverty and disadvantage. “Hillbilly” and “white trash” are filthy words in my home.

For one, I know it’s no shame to be poor is immediately followed in my head by “It’s no great honor either” from Fiddler on the Roof. Tevye was not a sinful man, but a good, honest, hardworking father and husband. “Economically disadvantaged” is a euphemism I find personally offensive because it suggest there is something shameful about poverty. Being rich is not supposed to give anyone special rights or privileges, and I have been thinking a lot about that lately. I know being poor is not a sin or a failure.

My husband was raised poor in a family that did not take charity. His family bought “day old” bread from an outlet when he was little, and he picked the mold off his lunch, trying not to be seen doing it. He sat on the porch waiting for his dad to get home on payday because there was no food in the house beyond scraped jars of condiments. His experience of poverty was not unique, and it didn’t happen in Kentucky, but in Arizona, but it was hard. One side of his family was Ballard Swedes from Seattle, Washington and the other was Dust Bowl Scots-Irish share croppers from Oklahoma, orphaned when their mother died and Pappie gave them away.

No one in his family intervened or encouraged him to make something of himself. Vietnam was raging and his hair was long. In the years between high school and college, he had three pieces of luck. He was granted a draft deferment based on his eyesight that eventually became permanent, he began working at the University Book Store where he was exposed to new people and ideas, and he met me. When I graduated from high school the next year, he went to college because I was going to college. My husband graduated from high school with a C average but he was Phi Beta Kappa when he graduated from the University of Washington four years later. Like Vance, he saw no point in pajamas and is still in a perpetual state of what others term catastrophizing. Christmas was fraught when I met him but has become a good holiday through decades of determined effort on my part. He loves his cotton jersey pajamas.

Vance would like to give himself all the credit. He would blame achievement or lack of it on people rather than circumstance, but like my husband, he had some luck.

From the LA Times: “As Vance puts it at the beginning of this American dream memoir, he has done nothing ‘extraordinary.’ So what’s wrong with all those other hillbillies? In suggesting that his own success in Silicon Valley was a matter of refusing cinnamon rolls, Vance is giving us a basis in feeling for the devastating policy Ben Carson wants to enact. People are poor because they deserve to be. And there it is: Trump-era elitism defined.”

Some people abuse the system, and some people are too proud to accept help, even for their children. When my husband was given a sweater by his pastor because his second-hand store clothing was too poor for church and too sad for the pastor to ignore, it was only because his mother won the argument with his father that he was allowed to keep it. It was the nicest item of clothing he ever owned as a child. “White trash” is a filthy expression in my home. “Red neck” was the term I was taught as a child. I would not use it today. Change is not easy.

In my forty-year experience working with students, I witnessed most parents doing the absolute best they knew how. Neglectful poor parents do not necessarily love their children any less than neglectful affluent parents do, but the results tend to be more public among the poor. They are less skillful at concealing problems because they do not have the money to hide behind. Some parents work too many jobs just to get by. I think of a single parent who could not ensure his child did his homework because he got off work in the middle of the night find his teenager drinking soda and playing video games instead of sleeping.

Affluent families have their own troubles involving drugs and mental health, abuse and time. Even in my poor, rural community, some entitled parents send their children to elite private schools. They can afford private lessons and vacations their peers cannot even imagine. Their students drive cars worth more than the average local yearly income. Affluent parents may not need to work two or three jobs to pay rent, but sometimes they work long hours or ignore their children because they choose to do so. The results are similar.

Things go horribly wrong for children, dreadful things happen to them, but in my experience, not always, but often when things go wrong with children—pregnancy, drinking, drugs, crime, dropping out—the causes are not simple genetics, politics, poverty, public education, or an unwillingness to work hard. Something is wrong in the home. Too many children from “nice homes” have revealed the truth of their lives to me. Wealthy or impoverished, when kids’ lives go very wrong, there is nearly always something very wrong in their lives. It is not a character flaw, but reaction to something they cannot control. And there is bad luck again.

Unintended teenage pregnancy caused moves and marriages and monstrous errors beginning with his Mamaw when she was too young to drive. It seems to me to be the particular curse of Vance’s family is early pregnancy. Yet he reflects on this only in passing, perhaps because as a boy it did not hit him personally.

Vance works hard not to blame the people he loved, even the people who damaged his life, but he is also specific and detailed in itemizing the chaos, abuses, insults, and injuries inflicted upon himself and he repeats the lists every few chapters to ensure readers do not miss the hardships he suffered. Still, this book is lived truth, and if Vance fails to recognize the irony of complaining that a single call to child services fails to net any interference in a neighbor’s neglect of her children and then complaining a handful of pages later about child services “prying” into his own messy family . . . well, I guess he’s what one of my young students once called “a guy”.

There is no easy answer to the problems we face in America, but I think it is fair to suggest that we could do better as a nation for our children, regardless of who is at fault for their troubles. An equitable public education, a reliable health care, a decent diet, and a nation caring enough to inconvenience itself would go a long way toward making the lives of all American children better. It would give us all a better future.

Vance was lucky in more ways that he credits.

His Mamaw was tough-talking and violent, but she used her threats to keep him off drugs and she assured him that golf was a rich boy’s game and education was his best hope for a decent future. In other words, he was pushed—hard!—to do what every person ambitious for monetary success does. Vance had support.

In addition to choosing to reject the dysfunctional walk he witnessed all around him and gaining the stability and peace of his Mamaw’s house, Vance claims he “found a couple of teachers who inspired [him] to love learning”, but it’s likely he didn’t find them; those teachers found him. No member of his family killed him though several seem to have tried, and he found a family and practical education in the Marines, without seeing action in Iraq. That’s another piece of luck. The Marines taught him to give more than he thought he had, and they took less than they have required from many others.

Vance would like to blame people on assistance for their trouble, but he had plenty of assistance himself.

Vance was lucky. He had strong people who loved him unconditionally. He found friends and mentors along the way. It was luck and generous people who saved him. He knows that. Or at least he should.