Hillbilly Elegy

helping enough, and then I’d wonder if,
in its attempts to help, it actually made
the problem worse.
Mamaw could spew venom like a
Marine Corps drill instructor, but what
she saw in our community didn’t just
piss her off. It broke her heart. Behind
the drugs, and the fighting matches, and
the financial struggles, these were
people with serious problems, and they
were hurting. Our neighbors had a kind
of desperate sadness in their lives.
You’d see it in how the mother would
grin but never really smile, or in the
jokes that the teenage girl told about her
mother “smacking the shit out of her.” I
knew what awkward humor like this was