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Hillbilly Anthem: With His Viral Protest Song, Oliver Anthony Is This Year’s J.D. Vance

Here we go again.

In 2016, I read Hillbilly Elegy, J.D. Vance’s moving, insightful memoir of growing up in the struggling white working class of Appalachia. Vance was, and is, a young man who wrote with critical passion about his people and their despair. He criticized structural economic reasons for their suffering, but also criticized self-sabotaging cultural beliefs and practices.

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