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Aunt Wee (Lori Vance)
J.D.’s uncle, and Bev’s older brother. Despite the toxic domestic environment created by Mamaw and Papaw’s constant fighting, Jimmy found a way to graduate high school, attend night school, and attain a sales job with Johnson & Johnson. Like J.D.’s Aunt Wee, he managed to establish a stable life, one that Vance references and calls upon throughout the memoir, holding it up as an example of the kind of rare success available to determined Appalachian individuals. Although Jimmy is a levelheaded and kind person, he remains to this day unwilling to speak to Bev, who he believes is irresponsible and selfish.
Uncle Jimmy Quotes in Hillbilly Elegy
The Hillbilly Elegy quotes below are all either spoken by Uncle Jimmy or refer to Uncle Jimmy. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Chapter 2 Quotes
Within two generations, the transplanted hillbillies had largely caught up to the native population in terms of income and poverty level. Yet their financial success masked their cultural unease, and if my grandparents caught up economically, I wonder if they ever truly assimilated. They always had one foot in the new life and one foot in the old one. They slowly acquired a small number of friends but remained strongly rooted in their Kentucky homeland.
Related Characters:
J.D. Vance (speaker), Mamaw, Papaw , Bev Vance, Uncle Jimmy, Aunt Wee (Lori Vance)
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
36
Explanation and Analysis:
In this passage, Vance looks at the effects of the mass hillbilly migration from Appalachia to the industrial Midwest, this time focusing more specifically on his grandparents’ experience. He uses the term “cultural unease” to describe the difficulties they faced in “assimilate[ing]” into the culture of Middletown, Ohio, where their hillbilly values—which thrived in Appalachia—were seemingly incompatible with everyday life. “Cultural unease” is a perfect term for this phenomenon, one that is easily applicable throughout Hillbilly Elegy, a book that concerns itself with the factors that make it hard to transition from one class to another. Indeed, it suggests that social mobility is challenging not only because it requires hard work and financial prowess, but because it invites emotional and psychological discomfort due to culture shock. This is an important notion to keep in mind later, when Vance writes about his own journey up the socioeconomic ladder.
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Uncle Jimmy Character Timeline in Hillbilly Elegy
The timeline below shows where the character Uncle Jimmy appears in Hillbilly Elegy. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Chapter 2
...to get used to their new life. In 1951 they had their first boy, Vance’s Uncle Jimmy . For a while they achieved something like domestic bliss, but things didn’t always work...
(full context)
Chapter 3
After Uncle Jimmy , Mamaw and Papaw had two more children: Vance’s mother Bev and his Aunt Wee...
(full context)
Uncle Jimmy left the house when he turned eighteen and secured a job at Armco. This left...
(full context)
