Book Review: Hillbilly Elegy

The Hillbilly Elegy by J.D. Vance provides a personal perspective into the problems being faced by the blue-collar white workers in America. Vance himself, grew up in Middletown, Ohio amidst a lot of domestic upheaval, yet, he pushed through the tumultuous years to join the Marine Corps and later, to graduate from Yale Law School. As someone who successfully rose from the economic and domestic distress that he was born into, Vance provides some unique insights about the current pessimistic socio-political attitude.

The Hillbilly Elegy stood out for me because Vance accepts the problem and acknowledges the problem cannot be solved in its entirety. Instead, he encourages a more piecemeal approach rooted in truly understanding the smaller grievances and hopefully providing some resolution from them. Vance highlights the positive aspects of payday loans, the delusional “truths” that lackadaisical people tell each other and pollsters and how sometimes a system such as foster care, which is built to provide some semblance of security to a child, instead does the very opposite.

The book serves the purpose of providing a microphone to the other side of the poverty debate. However, as Vance highlights himself, his book is a reflection and telling of his life and views. It is a point of reference and as any good story does, it opens the doors for more stories, the book is not an end in itself. It raises questions about the most effective ways of studying the lifestyle of a people when polling has a large margin of error, and about how a deep seated inertia against hard work can be dealt with in the coming days and years, and many more. Overall, it is a great read for those with the intention of gaining a holistic view of the socio-economic problems facing many parts of the world today.

To Quietude

To Quietude.

For sound travels more leisurely than light,

Keenly gathering moss along the lush slope of time.

And so, prolonged thunder follows the flash of lightning;

And so, applause rings long after the stage is emptied.

To Quietude.

For sound travels more leisurely than light,

Keenly gathering moss along the lush slope of time.

And so, heat multiplies for eons before a volcano erupts;

And so, sweat and tears are spent, unnoticed, for aeons before the conch of victory is finally heard.

To Quietude.

For sound travels more leisurely than light,

Keenly gathering moss along the lush slope of time.

And so, a bird flies artfully for long before it can sing it's song;

And so, the mind stumbles foolishly through the miles of life, before its laurels are announced.

To Quietude.

For sound travels more leisurely than light,

Keenly gathering moss along the lush slope of time.

And so, there is a simple gratitude owed to solitude;

And so, the unheard moments of character slip by whilst stringing the strains of victory in Quietude.

~Rishika Sudhir Dhody

An ode to the seashore

I stand at the seashore,

as my feet sink in the sand, 

being tickled by the lapping water;

I stand in wonderment,

How can one thing be everything and nothing?

I breathe in the salty air,

which announces the sea’s presence from far away;

and I wonder, how can one thing be both, salty and refreshing?

I gaze at the stillness beyond the waves,

and as a I remember the tales of mermaids,

I wonder how one thing can be so still and yet be filled with life?

As the waves play with my feet, 

I look across at all the rocks, which have been marked by the sea;

I wonder how one thing can be both endearing and scary?

I stand at the sea shore,

as my feet sink in the sand,

being tickled by the lapping water;

I close my eyes

and feel the wind pass me by,

at once, ferocious and playful;

and feel the sound of the sea

resonate with my being.

Engulfed in the wonderment,

I feel the stillness of time amongst all the motion;

I realize that even time stops

to pay homage to the sea,

The Sea, which is everything and nothing.

~Rishika Sudhir Dhody