social mobility

A critique of white American class structure, arguing that the paths of social mobility that once advanced the nation are now serving to further isolate an elite upper class while enforcing a growing and resentful white underclass.

". . . [the author] reveals the driving force behind the resurgence of populism: the tyranny of the meritocracy and the resentments it produces"--.

"A brilliant, funny, generation-defining memoir about the double bind of crafting perfect adversity narratives for highly selective institutions, while fumbling through the far murkier reality of actual life in foster care and inpatient mental health treatment. As a child, Emi Nietfeld was caught between a hoarder mother who got her put on antipsychotic medication, but was also the only person to believe she was exceptional, and a state system exemplified by a foster mom who tried to ban her art history flash cards because they had naked pictures (of Michelangelo's David). Even after wresting free of grim inpatient mental health institutions and getting into a prestigious boarding school, Emi scrambled for places to sleep during breaks. Realizing that her path to true independence lay in reinventing herself as a talented overcomer deserving of a full ride, she became obsessed with college admissions. While taking on the sad challenge of presenting herself as resilient to gain authorities' approval, Emi lived the untidy version of actual adversity at the same time--literally drafting her Common App statement while living out of her '92 Corolla. She found herself 'trading my past for my future' in college admissions essays and scholarship applications, in an extreme example of the immense pressure on teenagers from all backgrounds to build the foundations of their entire lives. Emi's story is a harsh illumination of the near-impossible challenge set by societal expectations of coming from nothing, the brokenness of our child welfare system, and the reality that congratulatory letters from top schools couldn't keep her safe--as she found when she was raped while on a trip following her Harvard admission. Though Emi learns that entering the Ivy League, working in Big Tech, and living in a fancy apartment doesn't mean her life turns into gold, her reflections on her unlikely history, and her journey in confronting trauma and injustice, hold powerful lessons. Candid and frequently harrowing, with a ribbon of dark humor, Acceptance is a stunning human story and an invaluable view of the actual cost of upward mobility"--Provided by the publisher.

A memoir chronicling the author's upbringing in a Philadelphia housing project in the 1960s, covering his father's erratic and emotional behavior and his own flight from the confines of his youth to follow his dreams and better his circumstances.

Explores the idea of the American dream, discussing the relationship between education and jobs, technological displacement of workers, downward mobility among certain groups, labor mobility and home ownership as indicators of the health of the idea of the American Dream.

Examines the ways in which curriculum is structured in the public school system, how it works, and where individual students are placed within it, and describes how this location effects student's college entry and career path.

Class Mobility examines the difficulties that low-wage and middle-class Americans experience when trying to move up the economic ladder, and takes a close look at the roles race and geography play in mobility today.

Explores why the American Dream is in jeopardy for millions of American children due to a growing opportunity gap between affluent and disadvantaged kids. Includes suggestions for creating more upward mobility, and features personal narratives and the latest research.

"Vance, a former marine and Yale Law School graduate, provides an account of growing up in a poor Rust Belt town that offers a broader, probing look at the struggles of America's white working class. The decline of this group, a demographic of our country that has been slowly disintegrating over forty years, has been reported on with growing frequency and alarm. J. D. Vance tells the true story of what a social, regional, and class decline feels like when you were born with it hung around your neck"--Provided by publisher.

Vance, a former marine and Yale Law School graduate, provides an account of growing up in a poor Rust Belt town that offers a broader, probing look at the struggles of America's white working class. The decline of this group, a demographic of our country that has been slowly disintegrating over forty years, has been reported on with growing frequency and alarm. J. D. Vance tells the true story of what a social, regional, and class decline feels like when you were born with it hung around your neck. The Vance family story begins hopefully in postwar America. J. D.'s grandparents were "dirt poor and in love," and moved north from Kentucky's Appalachia region to Ohio in the hopes of escaping the dreadful poverty around them. They raised a middle-class family, and eventually their grandchild (the author) would graduate from Yale Law School, a conventional marker of their success in achieving generational upward mobility. But as the family saga of Hillbilly Elegy plays out, we learn that this is only the short, superficial version. Vance's grandparents, aunt, uncle, sister, and, most of all, his mother, struggled profoundly with the demands of their new middle-class life, and were never able to fully escape the legacy of abuse, alcoholism, poverty, and trauma so characteristic of their part of America.