AUTHOR WRITES ABOUT GROWING UP IN 'TRUMP COUNTRY'
J.D. Vance livre un récit sur l'Amérique qui a élu Trump
Comment Donald Trump a-t-il pu être élu ? La question revient régulièrement à chaque nouveau tweet ahurissant signé des pouces du président américain. Vous trouverez quelques éléments de réponse en lisant Hillbilly Elégie, un roman autobiographique signé J.D. Vance et publié en France par Globe. Ce livre, un best-seller aux Etats-Unis, dresse un portrait saisissant de réalisme d’une partie souvent ignorée de l’Amérique.
Commentators of every stripe placed “Hillbilly Elegy,” the new memoir by J.D. Vance, on their lists of must-read books well before the presidential election that propelled Donald Trump to the White House, largely on votes of people similar to the family members Vance describes in his book. because Vance, who was raised by an extended family that was loving but also highly dysfunctional, writes about the struggles of working-class whites in the industrial Midwest in a way that avoids the mistakes made by the left of dismissing these citizens as “baskets of deplorables” who “cling to guns and religion” as a way to explain why they seemingly vote in ways that are contrary to their stated economic interests.
WHITE TRASH?
3. Clearly, eastern Kentucky and central Ohio, the places where Vance’s family members lived and continue to live, have been beset by economic challenges, including trade policies, the decline of the coal industry and automation. As factories shuttered and jobs moved overseas, Vance saw substance abuse and a culture of violence, illegitimacy and dependency overcome many of the residents in the Ohio town where his family lived. 4. But even as Vance writes with concern, nuance, and genuine love and pride about the fierce loyalty of hill people who migrated from Kentucky to Ohio, he resists blaming outside forces such as immigration and trade as the sole causes of the addiction his mother fought or for the lack of work ethic that he saw in the couple that readers meet early in the book. When Vance writes about the culture of violence, idleness, poor parenting and dependency, he uses the rhetoric that his fellow conservatives mostly use when they are talk-
4. concern inquiétude / genuine réel, sincère / fierce farouche / hill people montagnards / to blame tenir pour responsable / sole seul, unique / addiction dépendance / idleness désoeuvrement / poor parenting insuffisance parentale / fellow ici, autres (membres du même parti).