Hillbilly Elegy

men, is full of contradictions.
Things have gotten so bad that last
summer, after my cousin Mike buried his
mother, his thoughts turned immediately
to selling her house. “I can’t live here,
and I can’t leave it untended,” he said.
“The drug addicts will ransack it.”
Jackson has always been poor, but it
was never a place where a man feared
leaving his mother’s home alone. The
place I call home has taken a worrisome
turn.
If there is any temptation to judge
these problems as the narrow concern of
backwoods hollers, a glimpse at my own
life reveals that Jackson’s plight has
gone mainstream. Thanks to the massive