Radio Free never takes money from corporate interests, which ensures our publications are in the interest of people, not profits. Radio Free provides free and open-source tools and resources for anyone to use to help better inform their communities. Learn more and get involved at radiofree.org
American historian and the author of White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America, Nancy Isenberg, calls Republican vice-presidential nominee J.D. Vance a peddler of the “self-made man myth.” Isenberg criticizes Hilbilly Elegy, the memoir that propelled him to fame, as a deceptive way of selling this myth and the conservative politics it comes with. “Much of what his memoir says tells us nothing about real class conditions,” Isenberg says, pointing to her own historical and sociological research on the rural poor in the United States.
This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.