JD Vance Hillbilly Elegy Amazon: Is Hillbilly Elegy a true story?

Hillbilly Elegy is based on the true story of J.D. Vance, a venture capitalist who wrote a memoir about his childhood in a working-class family in Middletown, Ohio, in 2016. After his mother developed an addiction to painkillers, then heroin, and was unable to care for him, Vance was eventually raised by his grandmother.

All of the characters and many of the major details in Hillbilly Elegy are true, as it is based on a memoir. However, Howard and Taylor made a few key changes to the Hillbilly Elegy movie to differentiate it from the book.

In Hillbilly Elegy, J.D. Vance outlines his rise from the poor working class to the more affluent middle class. In doing so, he considers the notion of upward mobility, portraying it as always possible yet deeply complicated. He emphasizes that a hillbilly’s economic success greatly depends upon his or her sense of personal agency.