Gratitude

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

Page 18 of 82 · 20 per page

• From Hillbilly Elegy (2016)

  Yet I noticed after my cousin Bonnie was born that Christmastime at Aunt Wee’s house had a decidedly different flavor. Somehow my aunt and uncle’s children ended up with more pedestrian gifts than I had come to expect as a child. There was no obsession with meeting a two- or three-hundred-dollar threshold for each child, no worry that a kid would suffer in the absence of the newest electronic gadget. Usha often received books for Christmas. My cousin Bonnie, at the age of eleven, asked her parents to donate her Christmas gifts to Middletown’s needy. Shockingly, her parents obliged: They didn’t define their family’s Christmas holiday by the dollar value of gifts their daughter accumulated. However you want to define these two groups and their approach to giving—rich and poor; educated and uneducated; upper-class and working-class—their members increasingly occupy two separate worlds. As a cultural emigrant from one group to the other, I am acutely aware of their differences. Sometimes I view members of the elite with an almost primal scorn—recently, an acquaintance used the word “confabulate” in a sentence, and I just wanted to scream. But I have to give it to them: Their children are happier and healthier, their divorce rates lower, their church attendance higher, their lives longer. These people are beating us at our own damned game. I was able to escape the worst of my culture’s inheritance. And uneasy though I am about my new life, I cannot whine about it: The life I lead now was the stuff of fantasy during my childhood. So many people helped create that fantasy. At every level of my life and in every environment, I have found family and mentors and lifelong friends who supported and enabled me. But I often wonder: Where would I be without them? I think back on my freshman year of high school, a grade I nearly failed, and the morning when Mom walked into Mamaw’s house demanding a cup of clean urine. Or years before that, when I was a lonely kid with two fathers, neither of whom I saw very often, and Papaw decided that he would be the best dad he could be for as long as he lived. Or the months I spent with Lindsay, a teenage girl acting as a mother while our own mother lived in a treatment center. Or the moment I can’t even remember when Papaw installed a secret phone line in the bottom of my toy box so that Lindsay could call Mamaw and Papaw if things got a little too crazy. Thinking about it now, about how close I was to the abyss, gives me chills. I am one lucky son of a bitch. Not long ago, I had lunch with Brian, a young man who reminded me of fifteen-year-old J.D. Like Mom, his mother caught a taste for narcotics, and like me, he has a complicated relationship with his father. He’s a sweet kid with a big heart and a quiet manner.

• From The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce: A 25-Year Landmark Study (2000)

  He came through with shining colors. He was not always a good father but he’s a very good grandfather. Dad loves spending time with Racer. He’s making up with my child for all that we missed doing together. They go fishing, see movies, eat at Racer’s favorite restaurant, which is the Red Lobster.” Paula laughed and then grew serious. “I love my dad now all over again and I’m grateful for what he gives us. I say to him, ‘I love you now but I can only try to forgive you for the past.’” “Should you forgive him?” “I don’t know. I used to love him a lot and I think he loved me. People do things. I don’t know whether you can hold them responsible. I’ve learned to accept a lot of things and I’ve stopped being upset so much. Dad’s finally acting like the parent he was before they broke up. He was a wonderful father when I was a real little kid. He wants Racer and me to go live with him but I won’t. I need to stand on my own two feet.” As children of divorce move into their late twenties and thirties, relationships with their parents can change unexpectedly. Both generations have another chance to reexamine their interest in one another, to do things differently. Each developmental stage in adulthood offers the potential to grow as a person, to enhance one’s closest relationships that have gone awry, and to correct past mistakes and poor judgment. Several of the fathers came through with new interest and money for college when their children, especially their daughters, were still drifting in their late twenties. Sometimes it was in response to the birth of a grandchild in or out of wedlock and sometimes it reflected the stabilization in the older man’s life. It was not that they had more money. They never denied that they could have supported their child’s higher education. But their own life had become more stable in a second or third marriage or in their own decision to give up drinking. These funds made a huge difference in the lives of their children, several of whom were able to turn their lives around after wasting almost the whole decade of their twenties. There’s a clear message here about the plasticity in parent-child relationships and the ability of both to recast their relationship to everyone’s advantage. Some young adults go in search of their fathers, looking for ways to establish an adult relationship. One thirty-five-year-old woman called her estranged father out of the blue. “I didn’t want to go to his funeral someday and not know anything about him,” she said. Some of these efforts at rapprochement seem related to a new awareness of the finiteness of life, a sad sense that the parent will not live forever and time is running out.

• From Hillbilly Elegy (2016)

  There is room now for both anger at Mom for the life she chooses and sympathy for the childhood she didn’t. There is room to help when I can, when finances and emotional reserves allow me to care in the way Mom needs. But there is also recognition of my own limitations and my willingness to separate myself from Mom when engagement means too little money to pay my own bills or too little patience left over for the people who matter most. That’s the uneasy truce I’ve struck with myself, and it works for now. People sometimes ask whether I think there’s anything we can do to “solve” the problems of my community. I know what they’re looking for: a magical public policy solution or an innovative government program. But these problems of family, faith, and culture aren’t like a Rubik’s Cube, and I don’t think that solutions (as most understand the term) really exist. A good friend, who worked for a time in the White House and cares deeply about the plight of the working class, once told me, “The best way to look at this might be to recognize that you probably can’t fix these things. They’ll always be around. But maybe you can put your thumb on the scale a little for the people at the margins.” There were many thumbs put on my scale. When I look back at my life, what jumps out is how many variables had to fall in place in order to give me a chance. There was my grandparents’ constant presence, even when my mother and stepfather moved far away in an effort to shut them out. Despite the revolving door of would-be father figures, I was often surrounded by caring and kind men. Even with her faults, Mom instilled in me a lifelong love of education and learning. My sister always protected me, even after I’d physically outgrown her. Dan and Aunt Wee opened their home when I was too afraid to ask. Long before that, they were my first real exemplars of a happy and loving marriage. There were teachers, distant relatives, and friends. Remove any of these people from the equation, and I’m probably screwed. Other people who have overcome the odds cite the same sorts of interventions. Jane Rex runs the transfer students’ office at Appalachian State University. Like me, she grew up in a working-class family and was its first member to attend college. She’s also been married for nearly forty years and has raised three successful kids of her own. Ask what made a difference in her life, and she’ll tell you about the stable family that empowered her and gave her a sense of control over her future. And she’ll tell you about the power of seeing enough of the world to dream big: “I think you have to have good role models around you.

• From Hillbilly Elegy (2016)

  I owe a great deal to many people. In no particular order: Tina Bennett, my wonderful agent, believed in the project even before I did. She encouraged me when I needed it, pushed me when I needed it, and guided me through a publication process that initially scared the hell out of me. She has the heart of a hillbilly and the mind of a poet, and I’m honored to call her a friend. Besides Tina, the person who deserves the most credit for this book’s existence is Amy Chua, my Yale contracts professor, who convinced me that both my life and the conclusions I drew from it were worth putting down on paper. She has the wisdom of a respected academic and the confident delivery of a Tiger Mother, and there were many times that I needed (and benefitted) from both. The entire team at Harper deserves tremendous credit. Jonathan Jao, my editor, helped me think critically about what I wanted the book to accomplish and had the patience to help me accomplish it. Sofia Groopman gave the book a fresh eye when it was desperately needed. Joanna, Tina, and Katie guided me through the publicity process with warmth and skill. Tim Duggan took a chance on this project and me when he had little reason to do so. For all of them, and their work on my behalf, I’m very thankful. Many people read various drafts and offered important feedback, from questioning the choice of a word in a particular sentence to doubting the wisdom of deleting an entire chapter. Charles Tyler read a very early draft and forced me to hone in on a few core themes. Kyle Bumgarner and Sam Rudman offered helpful feedback early in the writing process. Kiel Brennan-Marquez, who has had the official and unofficial burden of teaching me writing for many years, read and critiqued multiple drafts. I appreciate all of their efforts. I’m grateful to the many people who opened up about their lives and work, including Jane Rex, Sally Williamson, Jennifer McGuffey, Mindy Farmer, Brian Campbell, Vicki Baldwin, Stevie Van Gordon, Sherry Gaston, Katrina Reed, Elizabeth Wilkins, JJ Snidow, and Jim Williamson. They made the book better by exposing me to new ideas and experiences. I’ve been fortunate to have Darrell Stark, Nate Ellis, Bill Zaboski, Craig Baldwin, Jamil Jivani, Ethan (Doug) Fallang, Kyle Walsh, and Aaron Kash in my life, and I consider each of them more brother than friend.

• From Hillbilly Elegy (2016)

  Sofia Groopman gave the book a fresh eye when it was desperately needed. Joanna, Tina, and Katie guided me through the publicity process with warmth and skill. Tim Duggan took a chance on this project and me when he had little reason to do so. For all of them, and their work on my behalf, I’m very thankful. Many people read various drafts and offered important feedback, from questioning the choice of a word in a particular sentence to doubting the wisdom of deleting an entire chapter. Charles Tyler read a very early draft and forced me to hone in on a few core themes. Kyle Bumgarner and Sam Rudman offered helpful feedback early in the writing process. Kiel Brennan-Marquez, who has had the official and unofficial burden of teaching me writing for many years, read and critiqued multiple drafts. I appreciate all of their efforts. I’m grateful to the many people who opened up about their lives and work, including Jane Rex, Sally Williamson, Jennifer McGuffey, Mindy Farmer, Brian Campbell, Vicki Baldwin, Stevie Van Gordon, Sherry Gaston, Katrina Reed, Elizabeth Wilkins, JJ Snidow, and Jim Williamson. They made the book better by exposing me to new ideas and experiences. I’ve been fortunate to have Darrell Stark, Nate Ellis, Bill Zaboski, Craig Baldwin, Jamil Jivani, Ethan (Doug) Fallang, Kyle Walsh, and Aaron Kash in my life, and I consider each of them more brother than friend. I’ve been fortunate, too, to have mentors and friends of incredible ability, each of whom ensured that I had access to opportunities I simply didn’t deserve. They include: Ron Selby, Mike Stratton, Shannon Arledge, Shawn Haney, Brad Nelson, David Frum, Matt Johnson, Judge David Bunning, Reihan Salam, Ajay Royan, Fred Moll, and Peter Thiel. Many of these folks read versions of the manuscript and provided critical feedback. I owe an incredible amount to my family, especially those who opened their hearts and shared memories, no matter how difficult or painful. My sister Lindsay Ratliff and Aunt Wee (Lori Meibers) deserve special thanks, both for helping me write this book and for supporting me throughout my life. I’m also grateful to Jim Vance, Dan Meibers, Kevin Ratliff, Mom, Bonnie Rose Meibers, Hannah Meibers, Kameron Ratliff, Meghan Ratliff, Emma Ratliff, Hattie Hounshell Blanton, Don Bowman (my dad), Cheryl Bowman, Cory Bowman, Chelsea Bowman, Lakshmi Chilukuri, Krish Chilukuri, Shreya Chilukuri, Donna Vance, Rachael Vance, Nate Vance, Lilly Hudson Vance, Daisy Hudson Vance, Gail Huber, Allan Huber, Mike Huber, Nick Huber, Denise Blanton, Arch Stacy, Rose Stacy, Rick Stacy, Amber Stacy, Adam Stacy, Taheton Stacy, Betty Sebastian, David Blanton, Gary Blanton, Wanda Blanton, Pet Blanton, Teaberry Blanton, and every crazy hillbilly I’ve ever had the honor to call my kin. Last, but certainly not least, is my darling wife, Usha, who read every single word of my manuscript literally dozens of times, offered needed feedback (even when I didn’t want it!), supported me when I felt like quitting, and celebrated with me during times of progress.

• From Hillbilly Elegy (2016)

  I don’t mean to suggest that my professor picked up the phone and told the judge he had to give me an interview. Before she did that, my professor told me that she wanted to talk to me very seriously. She turned downright somber: “I don’t think you’re doing this for the right reasons. I think you’re doing this for the credential, which is fine, but the credential doesn’t actually serve your career goals. If you don’t want to be a high-powered Supreme Court litigator, you shouldn’t care that much about this job.” She then told me how hard a clerkship with this judge would be. He was demanding to the extreme. His clerks didn’t take a single day off for an entire year. Then she got personal. She knew I had a new girlfriend and that I was crazy about her. “This clerkship is the type of thing that destroys relationships. If you want my advice, I think you should prioritize Usha and figure out a career move that actually suits you.” It was the best advice anyone has ever given me, and I took it. I told her to withdraw my application. It’s impossible to say whether I would have gotten the job. I was probably being overconfident: My grades and résumé were fine but not fantastic. However, Amy’s advice stopped me from making a life-altering decision. It prevented me from moving a thousand miles away from the person I eventually married. Most important, it allowed me to accept my place at this unfamiliar institution—it was okay to chart my own path and okay to put a girl above some shortsighted ambition. My professor gave me permission to be me. It’s hard to put a dollar value on that advice. It’s the kind of thing that continues to pay dividends. But make no mistake: The advice had tangible economic value. Social capital isn’t manifest only in someone connecting you to a friend or passing a résumé on to an old boss. It is also, or perhaps primarily, a measure of how much we learn through our friends, colleagues, and mentors. I didn’t know how to prioritize my options, and I didn’t know that there were other, better paths for me. I learned those things through my network—specifically, a very generous professor. My education in social capital continues. For a time, I contributed to the website of David Frum, the journalist and opinion leader who now writes for The Atlantic . When I was ready to commit to one D.C. law firm, he suggested another firm where two of his friends from the Bush administration had recently taken senior partnerships. One of those friends interviewed me and, when I joined his firm, became an important mentor. I later ran into this man at a Yale conference, where he introduced me to his old buddy from the Bush White House (and my political hero), Indiana governor Mitch Daniels.

• From Hillbilly Elegy (2016)

  Yet I noticed after my cousin Bonnie was born that Christmastime at Aunt Wee’s house had a decidedly different flavor. Somehow my aunt and uncle’s children ended up with more pedestrian gifts than I had come to expect as a child. There was no obsession with meeting a two- or three-hundred-dollar threshold for each child, no worry that a kid would suffer in the absence of the newest electronic gadget. Usha often received books for Christmas. My cousin Bonnie, at the age of eleven, asked her parents to donate her Christmas gifts to Middletown’s needy. Shockingly, her parents obliged: They didn’t define their family’s Christmas holiday by the dollar value of gifts their daughter accumulated. However you want to define these two groups and their approach to giving—rich and poor; educated and uneducated; upper-class and working-class—their members increasingly occupy two separate worlds. As a cultural emigrant from one group to the other, I am acutely aware of their differences. Sometimes I view members of the elite with an almost primal scorn—recently, an acquaintance used the word “confabulate” in a sentence, and I just wanted to scream. But I have to give it to them: Their children are happier and healthier, their divorce rates lower, their church attendance higher, their lives longer. These people are beating us at our own damned game. I was able to escape the worst of my culture’s inheritance. And uneasy though I am about my new life, I cannot whine about it: The life I lead now was the stuff of fantasy during my childhood. So many people helped create that fantasy. At every level of my life and in every environment, I have found family and mentors and lifelong friends who supported and enabled me. But I often wonder: Where would I be without them? I think back on my freshman year of high school, a grade I nearly failed, and the morning when Mom walked into Mamaw’s house demanding a cup of clean urine. Or years before that, when I was a lonely kid with two fathers, neither of whom I saw very often, and Papaw decided that he would be the best dad he could be for as long as he lived. Or the months I spent with Lindsay, a teenage girl acting as a mother while our own mother lived in a treatment center. Or the moment I can’t even remember when Papaw installed a secret phone line in the bottom of my toy box so that Lindsay could call Mamaw and Papaw if things got a little too crazy. Thinking about it now, about how close I was to the abyss, gives me chills. I am one lucky son of a bitch. Not long ago, I had lunch with Brian, a young man who reminded me of fifteen-year-old J.D. Like Mom, his mother caught a taste for narcotics, and like me, he has a complicated relationship with his father. He’s a sweet kid with a big heart and a quiet manner.

• From Hillbilly Elegy (2016)

  My mother and, increasingly, the entire neighborhood embodied another: consumerist, isolated, angry, distrustful. There were (and remain) many who lived by my grandparents’ code. Sometimes you saw it in the subtlest of ways: the old neighbor who diligently tended her garden even as her neighbors let their homes rot from the inside out; the young woman who grew up with my mom, who returned to the neighborhood every day to help her mother navigate old age. I say this not to romanticize my grandparents’ way of life—which, as I’ve observed, was rife with problems—but to note that many in our community may have struggled but did so successfully. There are many intact families, many dinners shared in peaceful homes, many children studying hard and believing they’ll claim their own American Dream. Many of my friends have built successful lives and happy families in Middletown or nearby. They are not the problem, and if you believe the statistics, the children of these intact homes have plenty of reason for optimism. I always straddled those two worlds. Thanks to Mamaw, I never saw only the worst of what our community offered, and I believe that saved me. There was always a safe place and a loving embrace if ever I needed it. Our neighbors’ kids couldn’t say the same. One Sunday, Mamaw agreed to watch Aunt Wee’s kids for several hours. Aunt Wee dropped them off at ten. I had to work the dreaded eleven A.M. to eight P.M . shift at the grocery store. I hung out with the kids for about forty-five minutes, then left at ten-forty-five for work. I was unusually upset—devastated, even—to leave them. I wanted nothing more than to spend the day with Mamaw and the babies. I told Mamaw that, and instead of telling me to “quit your damn whining” like I expected, she told me she wished that I could stay home, too. It was a rare moment of empathy. “But if you want the sort of work where you can spend the weekends with your family, you’ve got to go to college and make something of yourself.” That was the essence of Mamaw’s genius. She didn’t just preach and cuss and demand. She showed me what was possible—a peaceful Sunday afternoon with the people I loved—and made sure I knew how to get there. Reams of social science attest to the positive effect of a loving and stable home. I could cite a dozen studies suggesting that Mamaw’s home offered me not just a short-term haven but also hope for a better life. Entire volumes are devoted to the phenomenon of “resilient children”—kids who prosper despite an unstable home because they have the social support of a loving adult. I know Mamaw was good for me not because some Harvard psychologist says so but because I felt it. Consider my life before I moved in with Mamaw.

• From Hillbilly Elegy (2016)

  That year, I had volunteered to “adopt” a needy child, which meant that I was given a list by the local branch of the Salvation Army and told to return with a bag of unwrapped Christmas gifts. It sounds pretty simple, but I managed to find fault with nearly every suggestion. Pajamas? Poor people don’t wear pajamas. We fall asleep in our underwear or blue jeans. To this day, I find the very notion of pajamas an unnecessary elite indulgence, like caviar or electric ice cube makers. There was a toy guitar that I thought looked both fun and enriching, but I remembered the electronic keyboard my grandparents had given me one year and how one of Mom’s boyfriends meanly ordered me to “shut that fucking thing up.” I passed on learning aids for fear of appearing condescending. Eventually I settled on some clothes, a fake cell phone, and fire trucks. I grew up in a world where everyone worried about how they’d pay for Christmas. Now I live in one where opportunities abound for the wealthy and privileged to shower their generosity on the community’s poor. Many prestigious law firms sponsor an “angel program,” which assigns a child to a lawyer and provides a wish list of gifts. Usha’s former courthouse encouraged judicial employees to adopt a kid for the holidays—each a child of someone who previously went through the court system. Program coordinators hoped that if someone else purchased presents, the child’s parents might feel less tempted to commit crimes in order to provide. And there’s always Toys for Tots. During the past few Christmas seasons, I’ve found myself in large department stores, buying toys for kids I’ve never met. As I shop, I’m reminded that wherever I fell on the American socioeconomic ladder as a child, others occupy much lower rungs: children who cannot depend on the generosity of grandparents for Christmas gifts; parents whose financial situations are so dire that they rely on criminal conduct—rather than payday loans—to put today’s hot toys under the tree. This is a very useful exercise. As scarcity has given way to plenty in my own life, these moments of retail reflection force me to consider just how lucky I am. Still, shopping for low-income kids reminds me of my childhood and of the ways that Christmas gifts can serve as domestic land mines. Every year the parents in my neighborhood would begin an annual ritual very different from the one I’ve become accustomed to in my new material comfort: worrying about how to give their kids a “nice Christmas,” with niceness always defined by the bounty underneath the Christmas tree. If your friends came over the week before Christmas and saw a barren floor beneath the tree, you would offer a justification.

• From The Day the Revolution Began (2016)

  Paul is at pains to stress that this unveiling of God’s covenant justice is an act of free grace: those who believe are “by God’s grace . . . freely declared to be in the right” (3:24a). God is under no obligation to do this. God is in nobody’s debt. This too is covenant language: the “grace” of God in Paul looks back to similar language in scripture, indicating both that God has made promises out of his own loving purpose, not out of constraint, and that when he keeps them it is out of pure mercy—a point that Paul emphasizes when he sums up the whole argument in 12:1. And this mercy involves God’s being true to himself, his own character, purposes, and promises. But throughout the Second Temple period the divine covenant faithfulness was seen in a double light. This was summarized in Daniel 9, but it goes back, through many generations, texts, and traditions, to Deuteronomy 27–32, a passage to which Paul returns not least in the later exposition of the divine faithfulness in Romans 9–11. Faced with Israel’s idolatry, God’s covenant faithfulness would require him to let Israel reap the consequences, which would mean exile. But that same divine faithfulness would then mean restoration. And this coming restoration, the liberation from oppressive pagan powers, would be the new Exodus. The original Exodus was the fulfillment of God’s promises to Abraham (Gen. 15:13–16), so the renewal of the covenant would mean the newer, greater Exodus, this time involving the forgiveness of sins. That, famously, is the emphasis of Jeremiah 31:31–34, and also of Isaiah 40–55, to which we shall presently return. The framework for these six crucial verses is therefore set. The events concerning Jesus unveil and display the covenant faithfulness of Israel’s God. The scriptures themselves and the surrounding context in Romans indicate that this will mean God’s dealing with idolatry and sin and fulfilling his Israel-shaped purpose for the world. This, in outline, is what Paul thinks he is saying in this passage. The Messiah’s Faithfulness to God’s Purpose for Israel

• From Hillbilly Elegy (2016)

  I was mad at my mother and father, mad that I rode the bus to school while other kids caught rides with friends, mad that my clothes didn’t come from Abercrombie, mad that my grandfather died, mad that we lived in a small house. That resentment didn’t vanish in an instant, but as I stood and surveyed the mass of children of a war-torn nation, their school without running water, and the overjoyed boy, I began to appreciate how lucky I was: born in the greatest country on earth, every modern convenience at my fingertips, supported by two loving hillbillies, and part of a family that, for all its quirks, loved me unconditionally. At that moment, I resolved to be the type of man who would smile when someone gave him an eraser. I haven’t quite made it there, but without that day in Iraq, I wouldn’t be trying. The other life-altering component of my Marine Corps experience was constant. From the first day, with that scary drill instructor and a piece of cake, until the last, when I grabbed my discharge papers and sped home, the Marine Corps taught me how to live like an adult. The Marine Corps assumes maximum ignorance from its enlisted folks. It assumes that no one taught you anything about physical fitness, personal hygiene, or personal finances. I took mandatory classes about balancing a checkbook, saving, and investing. When I came home from boot camp with my fifteen-hundred-dollar earnings deposited in a mediocre regional bank, a senior enlisted marine drove me to Navy Federal—a respected credit union—and had me open an account. When I caught strep throat and tried to tough it out, my commanding officer noticed and ordered me to the doctor. We used to complain constantly about the biggest perceived difference between our jobs and civilian jobs: In the civilian world, your boss wasn’t able to control your life after you left work. In the Marines, my boss didn’t just make sure I did a good job, he made sure I kept my room clean, kept my hair cut, and ironed my uniforms. He sent an older marine to supervise as I shopped for my first car so that I’d end up with a practical car, like a Toyota or a Honda, not the BMW I wanted. When I nearly agreed to finance that purchase directly through the car dealership with a 21-percent-interest-rate loan, my chaperone blew a gasket and ordered me to call Navy Fed and get a second quote (it was less than half the interest). I had no idea that people did these things. Compare banks? I thought they were all the same. Shop around for a loan? I felt so lucky to even get a loan that I was ready to pull the trigger immediately. The Marine Corps demanded that I think strategically about these decisions, and then it taught me how to do so. Just as important, the Marines changed the expectations that I had for myself.

• From Hillbilly Elegy (2016)

  I don’t mean to suggest that my professor picked up the phone and told the judge he had to give me an interview. Before she did that, my professor told me that she wanted to talk to me very seriously. She turned downright somber: “I don’t think you’re doing this for the right reasons. I think you’re doing this for the credential, which is fine, but the credential doesn’t actually serve your career goals. If you don’t want to be a high-powered Supreme Court litigator, you shouldn’t care that much about this job.” She then told me how hard a clerkship with this judge would be. He was demanding to the extreme. His clerks didn’t take a single day off for an entire year. Then she got personal. She knew I had a new girlfriend and that I was crazy about her. “This clerkship is the type of thing that destroys relationships. If you want my advice, I think you should prioritize Usha and figure out a career move that actually suits you.” It was the best advice anyone has ever given me, and I took it. I told her to withdraw my application. It’s impossible to say whether I would have gotten the job. I was probably being overconfident: My grades and résumé were fine but not fantastic. However, Amy’s advice stopped me from making a life-altering decision. It prevented me from moving a thousand miles away from the person I eventually married. Most important, it allowed me to accept my place at this unfamiliar institution—it was okay to chart my own path and okay to put a girl above some shortsighted ambition. My professor gave me permission to be me. It’s hard to put a dollar value on that advice. It’s the kind of thing that continues to pay dividends. But make no mistake: The advice had tangible economic value. Social capital isn’t manifest only in someone connecting you to a friend or passing a résumé on to an old boss. It is also, or perhaps primarily, a measure of how much we learn through our friends, colleagues, and mentors. I didn’t know how to prioritize my options, and I didn’t know that there were other, better paths for me. I learned those things through my network—specifically, a very generous professor. My education in social capital continues. For a time, I contributed to the website of David Frum, the journalist and opinion leader who now writes for The Atlantic . When I was ready to commit to one D.C. law firm, he suggested another firm where two of his friends from the Bush administration had recently taken senior partnerships. One of those friends interviewed me and, when I joined his firm, became an important mentor. I later ran into this man at a Yale conference, where he introduced me to his old buddy from the Bush White House (and my political hero), Indiana governor Mitch Daniels.

• From Hillbilly Elegy (2016)

  We didn’t have cell phones, and we didn’t have nice clothes, but Mamaw made sure that I had one of those graphing calculators. This taught me an important lesson about Mamaw’s values, and it forced me to engage with school in a way I never had before. If Mamaw could drop $180 on a graphing calculator—she insisted that I spend none of my own money—then I had better take schoolwork more seriously. I owed it to her, and she reminded me of it constantly. “Have you finished your work for that Selby teacher?” “No, Mamaw, not yet.” “You damn well better start. I didn’t spend every penny I had on that little computer so you could fuck around all day.” Those three years with Mamaw—uninterrupted and alone—saved me. I didn’t notice the causality of the change, how living with her turned my life around. I didn’t notice that my grades began to improve immediately after I moved in. And I couldn’t have known that I was making lifelong friends. During that time, Mamaw and I started to talk about the problems in our community. Mamaw encouraged me to get a job—she told me that it would be good for me and that I needed to learn the value of a dollar. When her encouragement fell on deaf ears, she then demanded that I get a job, and so I did, as a cashier at Dillman’s, a local grocery store. Working as a cashier turned me into an amateur sociologist. A frenetic stress animated so many of our customers. One of our neighbors would walk in and yell at me for the smallest of transgressions—not smiling at her, or bagging the groceries too heavy one day or too light the next. Some came into the store in a hurry, pacing between aisles, looking frantically for a particular item. But others waded through the aisles deliberately, carefully marking each item off of their list. Some folks purchased a lot of canned and frozen food, while others consistently arrived at the checkout counter with carts piled high with fresh produce. The more harried a customer, the more they purchased precooked or frozen food, the more likely they were to be poor. And I knew they were poor because of the clothes they wore or because they purchased their food with food stamps. After a few months, I came home and asked Mamaw why only poor people bought baby formula. “Don’t rich people have babies, too?” Mamaw had no answers, and it would be many years before I learned that rich folks are considerably more likely to breast-feed their children. As my job taught me a little more about America’s class divide, it also imbued me with a bit of resentment, directed toward both the wealthy and my own kind. The owners of Dillman’s were old-fashioned, so they allowed people with good credit to run grocery tabs, some of which surpassed a thousand dollars.

• From Hillbilly Elegy (2016)

  Sofia Groopman gave the book a fresh eye when it was desperately needed. Joanna, Tina, and Katie guided me through the publicity process with warmth and skill. Tim Duggan took a chance on this project and me when he had little reason to do so. For all of them, and their work on my behalf, I’m very thankful. Many people read various drafts and offered important feedback, from questioning the choice of a word in a particular sentence to doubting the wisdom of deleting an entire chapter. Charles Tyler read a very early draft and forced me to hone in on a few core themes. Kyle Bumgarner and Sam Rudman offered helpful feedback early in the writing process. Kiel Brennan-Marquez, who has had the official and unofficial burden of teaching me writing for many years, read and critiqued multiple drafts. I appreciate all of their efforts. I’m grateful to the many people who opened up about their lives and work, including Jane Rex, Sally Williamson, Jennifer McGuffey, Mindy Farmer, Brian Campbell, Vicki Baldwin, Stevie Van Gordon, Sherry Gaston, Katrina Reed, Elizabeth Wilkins, JJ Snidow, and Jim Williamson. They made the book better by exposing me to new ideas and experiences. I’ve been fortunate to have Darrell Stark, Nate Ellis, Bill Zaboski, Craig Baldwin, Jamil Jivani, Ethan (Doug) Fallang, Kyle Walsh, and Aaron Kash in my life, and I consider each of them more brother than friend. I’ve been fortunate, too, to have mentors and friends of incredible ability, each of whom ensured that I had access to opportunities I simply didn’t deserve. They include: Ron Selby, Mike Stratton, Shannon Arledge, Shawn Haney, Brad Nelson, David Frum, Matt Johnson, Judge David Bunning, Reihan Salam, Ajay Royan, Fred Moll, and Peter Thiel. Many of these folks read versions of the manuscript and provided critical feedback. I owe an incredible amount to my family, especially those who opened their hearts and shared memories, no matter how difficult or painful. My sister Lindsay Ratliff and Aunt Wee (Lori Meibers) deserve special thanks, both for helping me write this book and for supporting me throughout my life. I’m also grateful to Jim Vance, Dan Meibers, Kevin Ratliff, Mom, Bonnie Rose Meibers, Hannah Meibers, Kameron Ratliff, Meghan Ratliff, Emma Ratliff, Hattie Hounshell Blanton, Don Bowman (my dad), Cheryl Bowman, Cory Bowman, Chelsea Bowman, Lakshmi Chilukuri, Krish Chilukuri, Shreya Chilukuri, Donna Vance, Rachael Vance, Nate Vance, Lilly Hudson Vance, Daisy Hudson Vance, Gail Huber, Allan Huber, Mike Huber, Nick Huber, Denise Blanton, Arch Stacy, Rose Stacy, Rick Stacy, Amber Stacy, Adam Stacy, Taheton Stacy, Betty Sebastian, David Blanton, Gary Blanton, Wanda Blanton, Pet Blanton, Teaberry Blanton, and every crazy hillbilly I’ve ever had the honor to call my kin. Last, but certainly not least, is my darling wife, Usha, who read every single word of my manuscript literally dozens of times, offered needed feedback (even when I didn’t want it!), supported me when I felt like quitting, and celebrated with me during times of progress.

• From Hillbilly Elegy (2016)

  There is room now for both anger at Mom for the life she chooses and sympathy for the childhood she didn’t. There is room to help when I can, when finances and emotional reserves allow me to care in the way Mom needs. But there is also recognition of my own limitations and my willingness to separate myself from Mom when engagement means too little money to pay my own bills or too little patience left over for the people who matter most. That’s the uneasy truce I’ve struck with myself, and it works for now. People sometimes ask whether I think there’s anything we can do to “solve” the problems of my community. I know what they’re looking for: a magical public policy solution or an innovative government program. But these problems of family, faith, and culture aren’t like a Rubik’s Cube, and I don’t think that solutions (as most understand the term) really exist. A good friend, who worked for a time in the White House and cares deeply about the plight of the working class, once told me, “The best way to look at this might be to recognize that you probably can’t fix these things. They’ll always be around. But maybe you can put your thumb on the scale a little for the people at the margins.” There were many thumbs put on my scale. When I look back at my life, what jumps out is how many variables had to fall in place in order to give me a chance. There was my grandparents’ constant presence, even when my mother and stepfather moved far away in an effort to shut them out. Despite the revolving door of would-be father figures, I was often surrounded by caring and kind men. Even with her faults, Mom instilled in me a lifelong love of education and learning. My sister always protected me, even after I’d physically outgrown her. Dan and Aunt Wee opened their home when I was too afraid to ask. Long before that, they were my first real exemplars of a happy and loving marriage. There were teachers, distant relatives, and friends. Remove any of these people from the equation, and I’m probably screwed. Other people who have overcome the odds cite the same sorts of interventions. Jane Rex runs the transfer students’ office at Appalachian State University. Like me, she grew up in a working-class family and was its first member to attend college. She’s also been married for nearly forty years and has raised three successful kids of her own. Ask what made a difference in her life, and she’ll tell you about the stable family that empowered her and gave her a sense of control over her future. And she’ll tell you about the power of seeing enough of the world to dream big: “I think you have to have good role models around you.

• From Hillbilly Elegy (2016)

  We didn’t have cell phones, and we didn’t have nice clothes, but Mamaw made sure that I had one of those graphing calculators. This taught me an important lesson about Mamaw’s values, and it forced me to engage with school in a way I never had before. If Mamaw could drop $180 on a graphing calculator—she insisted that I spend none of my own money—then I had better take schoolwork more seriously. I owed it to her, and she reminded me of it constantly. “Have you finished your work for that Selby teacher?” “No, Mamaw, not yet.” “You damn well better start. I didn’t spend every penny I had on that little computer so you could fuck around all day.” Those three years with Mamaw—uninterrupted and alone—saved me. I didn’t notice the causality of the change, how living with her turned my life around. I didn’t notice that my grades began to improve immediately after I moved in. And I couldn’t have known that I was making lifelong friends. During that time, Mamaw and I started to talk about the problems in our community. Mamaw encouraged me to get a job—she told me that it would be good for me and that I needed to learn the value of a dollar. When her encouragement fell on deaf ears, she then demanded that I get a job, and so I did, as a cashier at Dillman’s, a local grocery store. Working as a cashier turned me into an amateur sociologist. A frenetic stress animated so many of our customers. One of our neighbors would walk in and yell at me for the smallest of transgressions—not smiling at her, or bagging the groceries too heavy one day or too light the next. Some came into the store in a hurry, pacing between aisles, looking frantically for a particular item. But others waded through the aisles deliberately, carefully marking each item off of their list. Some folks purchased a lot of canned and frozen food, while others consistently arrived at the checkout counter with carts piled high with fresh produce. The more harried a customer, the more they purchased precooked or frozen food, the more likely they were to be poor. And I knew they were poor because of the clothes they wore or because they purchased their food with food stamps. After a few months, I came home and asked Mamaw why only poor people bought baby formula. “Don’t rich people have babies, too?” Mamaw had no answers, and it would be many years before I learned that rich folks are considerably more likely to breast-feed their children. As my job taught me a little more about America’s class divide, it also imbued me with a bit of resentment, directed toward both the wealthy and my own kind. The owners of Dillman’s were old-fashioned, so they allowed people with good credit to run grocery tabs, some of which surpassed a thousand dollars.

• From The Swimming-Pool Library (1988)

  My case, on account I suppose of my title, had been the subject of more talk than most—though nothing like as much as that of Lord Montagu, which shows all the signs of iniquity and hypocrisy evident in the handling of my arrest and prosecution, but wickedly aggravated by police corruption. In the prison my fellows felt sure that we two must be acquainted, and imagined us, I think, swopping young men’s phone numbers in the bar of the House of Lords. It was hard to convince them that not all peers—just as not all queers—know each other. Even so it appears that his case—and in its little way mine—are doing some good: even the decorous British, with their distrust of the life of instinct, their pleasure in conformity, are saying that enough is enough. Some of them, even, are saying that a man’s private life is his own affair, and that the law must be changed. My dim lavatorial notoriety became in the prison a kind of glamour, and helped me, as I looked about and learnt the faces and moods of the men, to make friends. Covert gestures of kindness saved me from trouble, or explained the punctilio of some futile but unavoidable chore. Matchboxes and half-cigarettes were slipped to me as we jostled together for Association. Warnings were given of the foibles of particular screws. And so the nonce-world, which became my world, closed about me, offered me its pitiful comforts, and began to reveal its depths—now murky, now surprisingly coralline and clear.

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  30. And here it is well to note that our philosophy can only by the grossest injustice be accused of being opposed to the advance and development of natural science. For, when the Scholastics, following the opinion of the holy Fathers, always held in anthropology that the human intelligence is only led to the knowledge of things without body and matter by things sensible, they well understood that nothing was of greater use to the philosopher than diligently to search into the mysteries of nature and to be earnest and constant in the study of physical things. And this they confirmed by their own example; for St. Thomas, Blessed Albertus Magnus, and other leaders of the Scholastics were never so wholly rapt in the study of philosophy as not to give large attention to the knowledge of natural things; and, indeed, the number of their sayings and writings on these subjects, which recent professors approve of and admit to harmonize with truth, is by no means small. Moreover, in this very age many illustrious professors of the physical sciences openly testify that between certain and accepted conclusions of modern physics and the philosophic principles of the schools there is no conflict worthy of the name. 31. While, therefore, We hold that every word of wisdom, every useful thing by whomsoever discovered or planned, ought to be received with a willing and grateful mind, We exhort you, venerable brethren, in all earnestness to restore the golden wisdom of St. Thomas, and to spread it far and wide for the defense and beauty of the Catholic faith, for the good of society, and for the advantage of all the sciences. The wisdom of St. Thomas, We say; for if anything is taken up with too great subtlety by the Scholastic doctors, or too carelessly stated-if there be anything that ill agrees with the discoveries of a later age, or, in a word, improbable in whatever way-it does not enter Our mind to propose that for imitation to Our age. Let carefully selected teachers endeavor to implant the doctrine of Thomas Aquinas in the minds of students, and set forth clearly his solidity and excellence over others. Let the universities already founded or to be founded by you illustrate and defend this doctrine, and use it for the refutation of prevailing errors. But, lest the false for the true or the corrupt for the pure be drunk in, be ye watchful that the doctrine of Thomas be drawn from his own fountains, or at least from those rivulets which, derived from the very fount, have thus far flowed, according to the established agreement of learned men, pure and clear; be careful to guard the minds of youth from those which are said to flow thence, but in reality are gathered from strange and unwholesome streams.

• From Hillbilly Elegy (2016)

  I’ve been fortunate, too, to have mentors and friends of incredible ability, each of whom ensured that I had access to opportunities I simply didn’t deserve. They include: Ron Selby, Mike Stratton, Shannon Arledge, Shawn Haney, Brad Nelson, David Frum, Matt Johnson, Judge David Bunning, Reihan Salam, Ajay Royan, Fred Moll, and Peter Thiel. Many of these folks read versions of the manuscript and provided critical feedback. I owe an incredible amount to my family, especially those who opened their hearts and shared memories, no matter how difficult or painful. My sister Lindsay Ratliff and Aunt Wee (Lori Meibers) deserve special thanks, both for helping me write this book and for supporting me throughout my life. I’m also grateful to Jim Vance, Dan Meibers, Kevin Ratliff, Mom, Bonnie Rose Meibers, Hannah Meibers, Kameron Ratliff, Meghan Ratliff, Emma Ratliff, Hattie Hounshell Blanton, Don Bowman (my dad), Cheryl Bowman, Cory Bowman, Chelsea Bowman, Lakshmi Chilukuri, Krish Chilukuri, Shreya Chilukuri, Donna Vance, Rachael Vance, Nate Vance, Lilly Hudson Vance, Daisy Hudson Vance, Gail Huber, Allan Huber, Mike Huber, Nick Huber, Denise Blanton, Arch Stacy, Rose Stacy, Rick Stacy, Amber Stacy, Adam Stacy, Taheton Stacy, Betty Sebastian, David Blanton, Gary Blanton, Wanda Blanton, Pet Blanton, Teaberry Blanton, and every crazy hillbilly I’ve ever had the honor to call my kin. Last, but certainly not least, is my darling wife, Usha, who read every single word of my manuscript literally dozens of times, offered needed feedback (even when I didn’t want it!), supported me when I felt like quitting, and celebrated with me during times of progress. So much of the credit for both this book and the happy life I lead belongs to her. Though it is one of the great regrets of my life that Mamaw and Papaw never met her, it is the source of my greatest joy that I did. Notes 1. Razib Khan, “The Scots-Irish as Indigenous People,” Discover (July 22, 2012), http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/gnxp/2012/07/the-scots-irish-as-indigenous-people/#.VY8zEBNViko. 2. “Kentucky Feudist Is Killed,” The New York Times (November 3, 1909). 3. Ibid. 4. Phillip J. Obermiller, Thomas E. Wagner, and E. Bruce Tucker, Appalachian Odyssey: Historical Perspectives on the Great Migration, (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2000), Chapter 1. 5. Ibid.; Khan, “The Scots-Irish as Indigenous People.” 6. Jack Temple Kirby, “The Southern Exodus, 1910–1960: A Primer for Historians,” The Journal of Southern History 49, no. 4 (November 1983), 585–600. 7. Ibid. 8. Ibid., 598. 9. Carl E. Feather, Mountain People in a Flat Land: A Popular History of Appalachian Migration to Northeast Ohio, 1940–1965 (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1998), 4.10. Obermiller, Appalachian Odyssey , 145.11. Kirby, “The Southern Exodus,” 598.12. Elizabeth Kneebone, Carey Nadeau, and Alan Berube, “The Re-Emergence of Concentrated Poverty: Metropolitan Trends in the 2000s,” Brookings Institution (November 2011), http://www.brookings.edu/research/papers/2011/11/03-poverty-kneebone-nadeau-berube.13. “Nice Work if You Can Get Out,” The Economist (April 2014), http://www.economist.com/news/finance-and-economics/21600989-why-rich-now-have-less-leisure-poor-nice-work-if-you-can-get-out.14. Robert P. Jones and Daniel Cox, “Beyond Guns and God.” Public Religion Institute (2012), http://publicreligion.org/site/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/WWC-Report-For-Web-Final.pdf.

• From Etched in Sand (2013)

  “That man is my father!” I yell at Pete, who’s curiously watching me pull out my boom box from its hiding place. “I won’t be needing this back here since there will be no Paul Accerbi meeting to record.” He never calls back, and I don’t care. He’s no better than my mother—I should have figured that out a long time ago. She picked some winners, and he was just like all the rest. By the summer I’ve closed off the whole experience; compartmentalized it and detached from it, the way I’ve learned to do with all the craziness in my life, which always stems back to Cookie. I busy myself working at Rickel’s to save money for college . . . then there’s finally something to celebrate when Addie and Pete come through with a car for me. “You can buy our Pinto for two hundred seventy-five dollars,” Addie says, “if you’re willing to put down a seventy-five-dollar deposit.” There’s more good news when I come to them with the seventy-five bucks: They’ve decided to waive the two hundred and let me keep the car as an early graduation present. The fall of my senior year, I’m named cocaptain of the gymnastics team. Under the guidance of Mr. Kelly and Mr. Maguire, I take my college exams and list my two schools of choice. They’re convinced that I’ll get accepted to the university, insisting that if I do, I have to go. “A bachelor’s degree from Stony Brook would serve you better than an associate’s from the community college,” Mr. Maguire says. It makes sense, but I’m afraid to get my hopes up. Preoccupied with whether I’ll have a home during or even after college, I look up a number in the phone book for the only possible family who might be able to help me: Calcaterra, Michael and Rose Grandma Rose warms up on the other end of the phone when I tell her I haven’t had a relationship with my mother for the last three years. I hear tears overcome her voice when she tells me, “We always wanted to know you kids. Will you let me take you shopping before you graduate? We’re so proud of you.” Before Easter, she and my grandfather—Grampa Mike—accompany me to JCPenney, where they let me pick out a prom dress and put it on their charge card. As Grandma Rose and the cashier exchange niceties at the cash register, I wonder: Why did you punish me when I was little by cutting me off? How was it acceptable for my siblings and me to bear the burden of Cookie alone? As she hands me the hanging plastic bag with my dress inside, Grandma Rose looks in my eyes . . . and suddenly I understand that this purchase is her amends to me.