Becki Basley

“So, to Papaw and Mamaw, not all rich people were bad, but all bad people were rich.”
― J.D. Vance, Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis

“...Mom equated money with affection...but I never cared about the money. I just wanted her to be healthy.”
― J.D. Vance, Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis

“Not all of the white working class struggles. I knew even as a child that there were two separate sets of mores and social pressures. My grandparents embodied one type: old-fashioned, quietly faithful, self-reliant, hardworking. My mother and, increasingly, the entire neighborhood embodied another: consumerist, isolated, angry, distrustful. There”
― J.D. Vance, Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis

“Despite its reputation, Appalachia—especially northern Alabama and Georgia to southern Ohio—has far lower church attendance than the Midwest, parts of the Mountain West, and much of the space between Michigan and Montana. Oddly enough, we think we attend church more than we actually do. In a recent Gallup poll, Southerners and Midwesterners reported the highest rates of church attendance in the country. Yet actual church attendance is much lower in the South.”
― J.D. Vance, Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis