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What it's like to grow up as a third culture kid in Saudi Arabia

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What it's like to grow up as a third culture kid in Saudi Arabia

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It was Orientation Week at Virginia Tech, and a pivotal moment. It was not only my induction into the world of university, but also my re-integration into life " stateside."

My group's (stereotypically obnoxious) "Orientation Leader" instructed us to sit on some benches located just outside the Johnston Student Center. The other freshman immediately sought shade from the beaming July sun, but I found the seat where it shone the brightest. For me, its warmth was a welcomed comfort.

One-by-one, we were asked to answer the most dreaded question for any third-culture-kid (someone who grew up in a culture different from their parents).

As I waited for my fellow students to mumble their awkward answers, I debated. Should I say South Carolina? Because that's where I was born...but I moved when I was two. Or should I say North Carolina? I lived there for a bit, but didn't really live in one city for too long. What about Virginia? That's where my grandparents live now - and where my license says I'm from...

As I continued this internal debate, I doze in-and-out in order to listen to everyone's answers. I quickly realized that a majority of them had only lived in Virginia.

Every third-culture-kid reading this won't be surprised at what I said when all eyes turned to me.

I didn't mention moving around, or more importantly, that I lived in Saudi Arabia.

At my heart's discontent, I didn't mention the place I considered my home because I didn't want to deal with the questions, the comments, and the reactions. As a freshman in college, I didn't want to stand out. I just wanted to fit in - to be normal.

Third-Culture-Kids and the lives they lead.

I often think back on that day, and all of the others when I avoided that question, or said the simpler answer. In certain situations I do tell people, but only within groups that I know will understand the life of an expatriate, and the youth of a third-culture-kid. Perhaps I'm underestimating people's ability to understand my life, but past experiences have proven that most of the time it's better to just avoid the topic altogether. Particularly if I want to avoid certain questions like, "Did they try to convert you?" as well as tense conversations with well-intentioned, yet wildly uninformed 'activists.' I've had a few heated exchanges with some unnamed students who tried to convince me that Saudi women weren't even allowed to read magazines, despite the fact that - a Saudi women's fashion magazine - has been published across the region since 1981. I have one at home with an article asking, "Do Saudis prefer bad boys?"

Being a third-culture-kid is incredibly rewarding, but also very lonely. Rewarding because you are given the opportunity to travel the world, expand your cultural knowledge, and develop tolerance rooted in personal experience. However, it is also lonely because your youth is filled with the loss of friends who "return home" or move elsewhere, and your adulthood is filled with a constant battle of unparalleled nostalgia for a "home" that was always impermanent, and never really yours. For many TCKs, there is always a series of shattering realizations. Like when they first left their home, and realized they would never return. Or when they moved back to their native country, and realized they just didn't quite fit in. Or when they realized that the idea of living in one place for more than a few years evokes an unexplainable, paralyzing fear.

My own experiences and reflections on these realizations have inspired me to explore the thoughts of others like me, either through informal conversations or formal interviews, like the ones conducted in this piece.

Life in the "Land of Sand" as told from different generations of expats.

This article portrays the lives of fourteen TCKs (out of thousands) from three different generations; the 1960s-1970s, the 1980s-1990s and the 2000s-2010s. This piece also sheds some light on a country generally associated with controversy, and mystery in the Western psyche. Often cheekily referred to as the "land of sand" by many TCKs that grew up there.

The map below shows the geographical location of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, which rests in the heart of the Middle East. Known as the "protector" of the two holiest cities in Islam - Mecca and Medina - this country is both economically and politically important. The cities where a majority of expatriates and third-culture-kids live is in the capital Riyadh, as well as Dhahran, Jubail, Jeddah, and Abha. It's important to point out that the experiences of the TCKs examined in this piece vary wildly from those living and working in Saudi Arabia as domestic workers, construction workers, nannies, or as any other "blue-collar" job. The migrant rights violations in the country are well documented, and honestly, indefensible. In fact, the experiences of our parents who worked in the country are also different from our experiences as kids growing up there. My father, and many of his friends, could rant for hours about the kafala system for example. A visa-sponsorship system that our parents often battled with in order to retain some level of professional, and personal 'freedom.' But that's an article for a different day - one that I hope to write as well.

Instead, this article starts its journey in 1960s Saudi Arabia, with Nalini Raj. Nalini was a member of the early batch of third-culture-kids that moved to the "land of sand" along with their parents after large deposits of oil was discovered in the 1940s.

Nalini Raj (1969-1983)

My parents are from South India. Before my parents got married, my father worked for ARAMCO in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia in the early 1960s. Ads used to come in the newspaper in India saying there were jobs in Saudi. He married my Mother in 1966 and I was born in Al-Khobar (a city right outside of Dhahran) in 1969. Our family was based in Saudi till 1988, when my Dad retired and left for India.

We were the hand-full of Indian kids who studied in Dhahran Academy. We only had till grade 9 then, as the Saudi Arabian government did not want boys and girls together after that age. So all kids in our school had to leave the country after grade 9.

We lived two lives in Saudi Arabia. One was in the compound or school (both were typically how we would live in Canada), and another life outside. My Mom and I would have to dress very conservatively, and once I turned 12 I wore the black robe ( abaaya) over my clothes. We didn't have to cover our faces however, just our heads and body. Men also weren't allowed to wear shorts in public. Television shows were censored and all magazines had huge black marker pens blacking out women's legs and bodies. Can you imagine getting your monthly reader's digest or national geographic in the mail, with half the pages covered in black marker?

Overall, I liked living in Saudi Arabia because I was privileged to have access to the American compounds, and also went to the best school there. My two best friends are still in touch with me today and we try to meet when we can. One is in the United States, and the other in India. The three of us grew up in Saudi and have a very strong connection as ABCDs.

Cameron Pollock (1970-1976)

My parents are from Ontario, Canada - we moved to Saudi Arabia because my dad was a professor of chemical engineering at the College of Petroleum and Minerals in Dhahran, now known as the University of Petroleum and Minerals. He later became Director of the Computer Center for the university.

When we first moved there, in 1970, no one even knew where we were going. By 1973, with the big OPEC oil crisis, everyone knew where Saudi Arabia was. Saudi Arabia has certainly established itself as a political force in the world since then.

We lived in university housing with families from the United States, Great Britain, Canada, and the Middle East. We went to school with kids from all over the world. I had classmates from Germany, England, Netherlands, Lebanon, and Egypt.

Even though we were sheltered from much of the controversy while living there, we did experience some of it. While I did not feel uncomfortable, my mother certainly did at times. She recounts times when she was uncomfortable with how she was treated. I also remember when I was in 7 th grade, a good friend of mine - a Lebanese Christian - was caught downtown by the mutawwa(religious police) because his hair was too long. The group of men detained him and cut off much of his hair in public.

Lisa Hiserodt (1974-1981)

I lived in Saudi Arabia from 1974 through 1981, and spent third grade through eighth at Dhahran Academy. My family, after a one-year sabbatical in California, returned to Saudi for a couple more years while I was in boarding school in Massachusetts.

We lived in Dhahran, on the campus of the University of Petroleum and Minerals, which was quite different from the many walled compounds of companies like Halliburton.

The campus was large and included the university buildings, which were separated from the residential area by its location up on the jebels (mountains). There were many housing "compounds" though they were not individually closed off from one another, and were instead networked together by a series of paths and sidewalks.

The houses were university property of course, as was all of the furniture. Each piece was tagged with a small metal inventory number. The housing was for faculty only, and about half of whom were Saudi.

When we first moved to the Kingdom we lived in the town of Dammam (near Dhahran) on the first floor of an apartment building. There was a Saudi family living above and we would pass the women in their abaayas in the foyer. One day my mother, my siblings and I were invited to their apartment for a celebration. There were five or six women sitting on a carpet on the floor and we were invited to do the same. Music began to play and then an astonishing event occurred. A young woman, dressed in a see-through abaaya decorated lavishly in gold thread and sequins, appeared from behind a closed door and began to dance. She turned rhythmically and her arms undulated in a way I'd never seen before. Her face, and ours, was lit by her smile. She was so happy. The women cheered and clapped and seemed to say to us, "Isn't she beautiful?"

Marisa Paul (1981-1988)

I moved to Saudi in 1981, to Dhahran, and attended Dhahran Academy. In 1986, we relocated to Khamis Mushayt, south of Jiddah, and I attended Asir Academy before returning to the United States in 1988. We moved to Saudi so my father could support the F-15 Eagle fighter jet program with McDonnell Douglas (now Boeing). My father was American, from Boston, and my mother is a political science professor from Zamboanga, Philippines.

I didn't understand at that time how diverse and economically booming the region was (diverse as a result of foreign workers, professionals, and diplomats). I also had no idea as a child of the amazing turmoil the eastern provinces were experiencing before, during, and even after the Iraq-Iran war and the uprisings even in Saudi.

We had CCTV feeds of Western television shows that were taped on VHS and airmailed to each compound. You could tell when the religious police had gotten to the shipments. Hour long shows like Magnum PI or Riptide, that featured a lot of expository dialogue forefront of women in bikinis, were "edited" and truncated to a half hour. Sometimes it really was a shock who the perpetrator was since you missed about half the show!

Brian McCammon (1982-1985)

We moved to Dhahran in 1982 (from Louisville, Kentucky) because my father was promoted to manage the SABCO (Saudi Arabian Bechtel Company) office that oversaw the entire KSA construction for Bechtel.

As a student living in Saudi, I woke up around 6 a.m., got ready for school and walked to the buses that lined up inside our compound. Some of our buses looked like regular school buses, but not always painted that rich golden yellow like in the United States, but various other colors like navy blue, dark green, or maybe a lighter blue.

Going downtown was always fun to see all the bright lights, electronic stores, food places, music stores, photography stores, sporting goods stores and various jewelry stores that were sparkling with gold, silver and so many gems. It was always crowded at night since there was often nothing to do for many of the single foreign men so they ate out, shopped and walked around the city.

While many people (outsiders) saw living in Saudi as being like a prison or giving up so much of what they enjoyed at home, those who lived there appreciated all the new opportunities Saudi life gave them and also valued more of what we left behind.

Being in Saudi and having those experiences changed me because it opened my mind to so much of the world and other people. To attend a school with 50 different nationalities and to have so much diversity in teachers and friends made for an amazing time. To grow up, even for a short few years in a foreign country helps you learn to cope, tolerate, understand, appreciate and enjoy other people, cultures, traditions and ways of life.

Gizem Alper (1983-1988)

I am from Turkey. We moved to Dhahran due to the employment of my father, he is a professor in chemical engineering and he worked at the university there.

Expat life and Saudi life is completely different. I can easily say that I don't recall having a Saudi friend or neighbor or even interaction. All expats live in gated communities, referred to as compounds. It is a completely different world inside the compounds. Life is "normal" inside compounds...and it was so huge you had to drive to get from one place to another inside the compound.

Waseem Rahman (1983-1996)

I was born in Al-Khobar in 1983, and went to Dhahran Academy - the British stream - between 1990-1996. From 1996 onward, I went to boarding school in England, however, I returned to KSA at least once a year to visit my parents until they retired in 2013.

My parents are Bangladeshi, and moved to KSA in 1977, having trained and practiced in the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and Libya as doctors/professors.

From my perspective, people's misunderstandings of the Kingdom are the result of the "free world's" perpetual need for an arch-enemy.

Omar Hasan Khan (1985-2003)

I was actually born in Al-Khobar back in 1985. I grew up in Khobar and left in 2003 after completing high school. My parents are Pakistani and Indian, my dad moved to Saudi in 1983 after he saw an advert for a job in a Pakistani newspaper.

I attended a couple of private nurseries/preschools, which run by some Pakistani ladies in their compounds before I was enrolled in Dhahran Academy - British Stream (now Dhahran British Grammar School or DBGS) in Year 2 (Grade 1).

At that time, DBGS only went up till Year 9. The alternative for students was to either switch to the American education system and go to Dhahran Academy - the American stream - or if they wanted to continue with the British system, then they would either go to a boarding school in the United Kingdom, or attend St. Christopher's in Bahrain (since Bahrain is a 30-45 minute drive away from Khobar).

Luckily, by the end of Year 9, DBGS started their IGCSE program (Year 10-11), so I went back to that school. I was a part of their guinea pig batch for the program but it was a big step for the school. I believe they recently started the A-Levels (Advanced Level, Year 12-13) program as well.

It would be misleading to say that all expats live in compounds; but yes, a certain number do. At the end of the day, compounds are expensive so unless you're at a good position in your company or your company has great HR policies, you're more likely to live in an apartment or maybe even a villa - all rented of course.

Recently, I've moved back to Saudi. I worked for the same company in Pakistan so my move was an internal transfer. Life as a working adult in Saudi is different. It's not as much fun and games anymore and the lack of entertainment options starts hitting you. It's still a comfortable life. Plus I'm not living in a compound now. It isn't a country for the bachelor life, I can say that much!

Amanda Tolman (1992-1998)

My life, I must say has never really been boring. It's been one adventure after another. I lived in Riverside, California with my mother, father, and a half brother until I was the tender age of 8. My father worked for a company called Hughes Aircraft, later known as Raytheon. He worked as an engineer with the military, but not in the military.

In 1992, my father had just come home from a year-long single status business trip to Saudi Arabia, and finally my mother and I were about to join him.

I lived on quite a few compounds during my total stay in Saudi. I went to school at SAIS-R (Saudi Arabia International School-Riyadh). I was there till about half way through 5th grade. I had friends from across Europe, different parts of Asia, and the Middle East. Half way through 5th grade, we moved to Dhahran. There I went to Dhahran Academy, and stayed till I graduated 8th grade. I had amazing teachers, very interactive, and you could tell they loved what they did. I had an amazing history teacher who got me interested in Archaeology. We even had an Archaeology club, with a little dig site and everything at school.

Life doesn't have one path to happiness. It's about finding your own path, what works for you, and also respecting others enough to find their own. One of the main things I take away from my experience going to school there, is the values and respect we all had. Everyone had their own background, culture, and ideals, but despite all the differences as kids, we just cared about little stuff.

Mireille Najjar (1991-2009)

My parents are both originally from Lebanon, so I definitely consider myself Lebanese. We all carry the US passport, so we have the American nationality as well.

Living in Aramco as a student in general was very carefree, easygoing, and relaxing. I spent a lot of my time between school and extracurricular activities, including ballet, jazz, and piano.

My cousins also lived in Aramco at the time, so I would usually spend a lot of time with them at their house or walk around outside in the desert heat. We would spend a few hours at a nearby park, or hang out at the local snack bar for some late-night shawarmas. On weekends, I spent most of my time with family and friends, and on Fridays, it became the tradition for the whole family (relatives included) to eat at one of our favorite restaurants in Khobar (usually Chili's or Fuddruckers), have dessert at Cinnabon, then come back home and relax for a few hours before finishing up homework.

High school was a bit different - I spent most of my time between school and extracurricular activities during the week, and a lot of time with my friends during the weekend.

We either ended the night with late-night catch up sessions in our friends' backyards, or stopped by at a popular "hangout" spot called the Stud Rec to meet up with other Aramcons and returning students.

Saudi Arabia is definitely not what most people think - at least where I lived. I had the opportunity to grow up in a safe, sheltered environment that housed thousands of individuals from all over the world. The friends I made became my second family. Aramco is a community of expats; a melting pot of different cultures and traditions, and I had some of my favorite memories there growing up. I learned to grow and adapt and understand new cultures and ideas. From the outside, it's just a large, dusty city filled with palm trees and large buildings with signs on every one of them. You come across nicely paved roads, dusty cars, and people from all walks of life bumping into each other at the commissary or the dining hall. You turn your head and you see a familiar face, and you figure out ten minutes later that they used to go to school with you in the 5 th grade. You come back for December break to discover that everyone is back home and ready to reunite again. You realize how much you miss it once you leave...even though you've been dying to leave for so long.

As a young Christian, Lebanese "Westernized" female, I definitely felt uncomfortable at times while living in the Kingdom. During prayer times, my friends and I would sometimes be stopped by the religious police, the Mutawwa, and be demanded to cover our hair. Sometimes, other locals would stop us on the streets or in the malls to cover our hair as well. After that happened a few times, I ended up wearing a black scarf around my neck "just in case" I would be stopped again. These were probably the only times I felt truly uncomfortable in my own skin - as a young female living in Saudi Arabia.

Osamah Mohammad Khan (1991-2016)

I was born and raised in a city called "Al-Khobar." During this span of 25 years, I have also lived in several other cities such as Al-Ahsa, Hafoof, Jubail, Dammam, Dhahran, Jeddah and Riyadh for a short period of time. For my high school, I went to Pakistani International School (PIS) in downtown Al-Khobar. To continue higher education, I was lucky enough to get enrolled in the top engineering university in the Middle East, King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals (KFUPM) in 2011.

My parents have Pakistani nationality and they were born and raised in Pakistan. My father is an academic person; he completed his education from Pakistan and came to Saudi Arabia as an instructor at KFUPM.

I was born and raised here so I do not really see the changes, which other expatriates may have experienced. As of discussing with my friends who moved to Saudi Arabia after the age of 10, said that they found life very peaceful and safe here in the kingdom. Most of them gave a religious reason that practicing religion is very easy over here than in their original native countries.

Mahrouz Choudhary (1993-2011)

I was born in Al Khobar, Saudi Arabia and lived there my whole life where I attended Dhahran Elementary Middle School and Dhahran High School, roughly a 10-minute drive from Al Khobar. My father has been running a leading contracting company in the Eastern Province since 1989 so I was there because of my dad's business. I am originally from Faisalabad, Pakistan.

I would really like the readers of your magazine to know that there is more to Saudi Arabia that meets the eye - it is not a bad place at all to grow up, and it is good for your child's formative years to grow up in a society which is composed of many international people so as to introduce them to different cultures and beliefs in a responsible environment. Unfortunately, the country gets a bad reputation by the media because it is more reclusive than its GCC neighbors although the highest standard of living is actually in Saudi Arabia.

Camree Engman (1998-2009)

I lived in Dhahran for 11 years, on the Dhahran Saudi ARAMCO compound. I attended Dhahran Elementary and Dhahran Jr. High schools on my compound until 9 th grade, and then attended Dhahran High School off my compound.

When I was 7 years old my Dad was looking for a new job that fit certain requirements. He found an ad for a position working for ARAMCO in Saudi Arabia. It was exactly what our family needed at the time and he took it. My family is American and neither of my parents had ever lived outside of the U.S. The move was a surprise to them, and to all my extended my family, but it turned out to be an adventure we wouldn't have traded for anything.

I would like to share with those not familiar with the country that the media-propelled stereotypes, like any other media-propelled stereotype, are inaccurate. The people, the food, the customs, the language, and the country itself is beautiful and fascinating. I loved my childhood there and I would not trade it. Living there has taught me above all, acceptance and tolerance. Saudi Arabia is a huge melting pot with residents from all countries around the globe. This gave me the opportunity to learn about all different countries, cultures, religions and ways of life in a way that I feel I could not have anywhere else.

There were a few times I did feel a little uncomfortable. For example, a compound not too far from mine had a shooting years ago. This was a rare occasion however and I usually felt very safe and well protected. I think it is important for people to understand that despite the media's portrayal of Saudi Arabia and Muslims, they are generally loving and friendly people. Terrorist groups have given Muslims and Arabs in general a bad name, however these radical groups are no more representative of Arabs or of Islam than the KKK is representative of Christianity.

James Longstaff (2000-2010)

I lived in Dhahran Saudi Arabia on the Saudi ARAMCO compound. I went to the Saudi ARAMCO schools in Dhahran from third grade to ninth grade, and then finished high school at Dhahran High School, also known at the Academy.

My dad got a job with an oil company as a Chemical Engineer. My father is American from Utah and my mother is Tongan, although she is a US citizen now. My family doesn't have a long history in the United States. My dad's parents are from Europe (France and England), and my mom came to the US with her family in the 1960's or 1970's.

When IKEA came to my town (yes it took a little while for that to happen), I remember shopping and seeing Saudi men and women looking at furniture. Since they were looking for furniture, I would imagine how they would take their Bjursta and their Lugnvik home and enjoy it. I like this memory so much because it is such a regular thing in the West. When we hear something on the Middle East in the news we don't hear of families buying furniture at IKEA.

Saudi Arabia doesn't share the same history as we do, so the ideologies that shape their lifestyle are different than the ones we live by here in the West. However, Saudis are very family-oriented and love their friends, just like people in the West do.

Victoria Heath - aka. Me (2002-2010)

I moved to Saudi Arabia with my brother and my dad when I was in sixth grade - first to Khamis Mushayt near Abha, and then to Dhahran for high school. My dad, an ex-U.S. Airman, worked on the F-15 outfit like many other former military guys in the country.

I think each individual that I interviewed for the piece has already said the things I would about Saudi Arabia, so I'll just end this article by leaving you with the main lesson I've learned living abroad, and traveling:

Normal is relative. Go find your normal.

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What it's like to grow up as a Third-Culture-Kid in Saudi Arabia

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It was Orientation Week at Virginia Tech, and a pivotal moment. It was not only my induction into the world of university, but also my re-integration into life " stateside." My group's (stereotypically obnoxious) "Orientation Leader" instructed us to sit on some benches located just outside the Johnston Student Center.

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"I grew up poor, in the Rust Belt, in an Ohio steel town that has been hemorrhaging jobs and hope for as long as I can remember." That's how J. D. Vance begins one of this campaign season's saddest and most fascinating books, "Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis" (Harper). Vance was born in Kentucky and raised by his grandparents, as a self-described "hillbilly," in Middletown, Ohio, home of the once-mighty Armco Steel. His family struggled with poverty and domestic violence, of which he was a victim. His mother was addicted to drugs-first to painkillers, then to heroin. Many of his neighbors were jobless and on welfare. Vance escaped their fate by joining the Marines and serving in Iraq. Afterward, he attended Ohio State and Yale Law School, where he was mentored by Amy Chua, the law professor and tiger mom. He now lives in San Francisco, where he works at Mithril Capital Management, the investment firm helmed by Peter Thiel. It seems safe to say that Vance, who is now in his early thirties, has seen a wider swath of America than most people.

Had "Hillbilly Elegy" been published last year, or the year before, it still would have found readers: it's a detailed and moving account of American struggle. This year, though, the book has been adopted by an unusually large and passionate audience. The name Trump never appears in the book, which was written, presumably, before his capture of the Republican Party. Still, anti-Trump conservatives have responded to its largely empathetic portrait of poor, white Americans, which they see as an alternative to the less sympathetic theories about Trump's least affluent supporters-"They're all racist," essentially-that have become popular on the left. Earlier this summer, Rod Dreher, the intellectually restless American Conservative columnist, wrote that "Hillbilly Elegy" "does for poor white people what Ta-Nehisi Coates's book did for poor black people: give them voice and presence in the public square." Liberal readers may bristle at the comparison-Vance, to be clear, is a white conservative-but Dreher has a point. Just as the death of Michael Brown, in Ferguson, persuaded many non-black people to read "Between the World and Me," so the success of Donald Trump has persuaded many people who have never visited the wrecked towns of the Rust Belt to read "Hillbilly Elegy." Dreher's interview with Vance-" Trump: Tribune of Poor White People"-was so popular that it crashed The American Conservative's servers. "Hillbilly Elegy" is now in second place on the Times_ _nonfiction best-seller list.

In many ways, "Hillbilly Elegy" tells a familiar story. It's a regional memoir about Vance's Scots-Irish family, one of many who have lived and worked in Appalachia for generations. For perhaps a century, Vance explains, the region was on an upward trajectory. Family men worked as sharecroppers, then as coal miners, then as steelworkers; families inched their way toward prosperity, often moving north in pursuit of work. (Vance's family moved about a hundred miles, from Kentucky to Ohio; like many families, they are "hillbilly transplants.") In mid-century Middletown, where Armco Steel built schools and parks along the Great Miami River, Vance's grandparents were able to live a middle-class life, driving back to the hollers of Kentucky every weekend to visit relatives and friends.

Middletown's industrial jobs began to disappear in the seventies and eighties. Today, its main street is full of shuttered storefronts, and is a haven for drug dealers at night. Vance reports that, in 2014, more people died from drug overdoses than from natural causes in Butler County, where Middletown is located. Families are disintegrating: neighbors listen as kitchen-table squabbles escalate and come to blows, and single mothers raise the majority of children (Vance himself had fifteen "stepdads" while growing up). Although many people identify as religious, church attendance is at historic lows. High-school graduation rates are sinking, and few students go on to college. Columbus, Ohio, one of the fastest-growing cities in America, is just ninety minutes' drive from Middletown, but the distance feels unbridgeable. Vance uses the psychological term "learned helplessness" to describe the resignation of his peers, many of whom have given up on the idea of upward mobility in a region that they see as permanently left behind. Writing in a higher register, he says that there is something "almost spiritual about the cynicism" in his home town.

Much of the personal story Vance tells in "Hillbilly Elegy" revolves around his slow and painful divorce from "hillbilly culture." Hillbillies, he writes, are proud of their "loyalty, honor, and toughness"; of their fierce, unpretentious patriotism; of their work ethic, their tight-knit families, and the decisiveness with which they administer "hillbilly justice." ("I earned my first bloody nose at five and my first black eye at six," Vance recalls, of two times someone insulted his mother.) Vance, too, is proud to be a hillbilly: he uses the term in a dignified and respectful way throughout his book. All the same, he comes to believe that his community suffers from "cognitive dissonance"; there is, he writes, "a broken connection between the world we see and the values we preach." If family is all-important, then why are alcoholism and domestic abuse so common? If hillbillies are so hardworking, then why do so few people in Middletown work? Plenty of people, of course, work hard, often struggling to assemble a livelihood out of part-time jobs. But they live alongside able-bodied neighbors who are lifetime welfare recipients (and experts at gaming the welfare system). One friend quits a good job because he's "sick of waking up early," then takes to Facebook to bemoan the "Obama economy."

In Vance's view, the depredations of globalization have been sharpened by poorly implemented social programs, which, though well-intentioned, allow "a large minority . . . to live off the dole," while breeding resentment and rage among everyone else. But "hillbilly culture," which allows "the white working class to blame its problems on society or the government," is part of the problem, too. Vance criticizes its violence, its stubbornness, its pride, its incuriosity, and its "bizarre sexism," which, he thinks, all encourage "reacting to bad circumstances in the worst way possible." While communities elsewhere in America are enthralled by the prosperity gospel, Vance's friends and family recite a disengaged catechism: "We can't trust the evening news. We can't trust our politicians. Our universities, the gateway to a better life, are rigged against us. We can't get jobs. You can't believe these things and participate meaningfully in society." He concludes, "There is a lack of agency here-a feeling that you have little control over your life and a willingness to blame everyone but yourself. This is distinct from the larger economic landscape of modern America."

Why is hillbilly culture so defensive, insular, and frozen in time? Vance argues that-because no culture exists in a vacuum-hillbillies are only partially to blame. In the course of his journey from Middletown to the Marines to Yale, Vance finds that hillbilly pessimism is, in its toxicity, equalled by the disdain that metropolitan people feel for those they call "rednecks" or " white trash." The Marine Corps is a genuine American melting pot and, for Vance, a transformative experience. But, at Yale, Vance learns that he's better off hiding the details of his upbringing. He elides the fact that he was raised mainly by his grandparents (a normal circumstance where he comes from), and begins talking about his "grandmother" and "grandfather" even though, at home, he calls them "Mamaw" and "Papaw." He braves Whole Foods, learns to make cocktail-party chitchat, and endeavors to keep his voice down in public (restaurant screaming matches are unexceptional among Middletown couples). He is shocked by the extreme and near-universal affluence of his classmates.

White poverty, Vance comes to feel, is a source of special shame: no one at Yale sees dignity in it. Instead, they define themselves in opposition to people like him. One professor says that, in his opinion, Yale Law shouldn't bother accepting students from non-Ivy League schools, since it's not in the business of "remedial education." Vance takes a new friend to Cracker Barrel, one of his family's favorite restaurants, but the friend can't enjoy it-to him, it's just "a greasy public health crisis." There's nothing Vance is prouder of than his service in the Marines, and yet his fellow-students routinely express contempt for the military-it never occurs to them that there's a veteran in their midst. Vance often feels like a class traitor who's grown "too big for his britches." At the same time, he's tempted to give up on the project of socioeconomic ascent. "It's not just our own communities that reinforce the outsider attitude," he concludes. "It's the places and people that upward mobility connects us with."

At Yale, Vance meets Usha, his future wife, a California girl from a South Asian family. Usha understands his feelings of dislocation, which makes sense: Vance's story is, in many respects, an immigrant story. Earlier this year, in a controversial essay, the National Review correspondent Kevin D. Williamson argued that emigration, not amelioration, was the solution to Rust Belt poverty. "The truth about these dysfunctional, downscale communities is that they deserve to die," Williamson wrote. "Economically, they are negative assets. Morally, they are indefensible":

Forget all your cheap theatrical Bruce Springsteen crap. Forget your sanctimony about struggling Rust Belt factory towns and your conspiracy theories about the wily Orientals stealing our jobs. . . . The white American underclass is in thrall to a vicious, selfish culture whose main products are misery and used heroin needles. Donald Trump's speeches make them feel good. So does OxyContin. What they need isn't analgesics, literal or political. They need real opportunity, which means that they need real change, which means that they need U-Haul.

Vance and Williamson agree that struggling working-class whites may need to get out of Middletown. But Vance focusses on the obstacles to their migration. Some of those barriers are economic or educational. But Vance also catalogues the cultural barriers that keep poor, small-town whites isolated, and points out that many of them are erected by élite people who simultaneously take pride in being progressive and enlightened. Their snobbery, Vance believes, has escalating social and economic costs. Economically, it makes migrating from a depressed area to a growing one both harder and less desirable. Socially, it creates a feedback loop of mutual contempt and increasing division. If being élite means not being a hillbilly, then hillbillies will be less likely to try to become élites-or, for that matter, to elect them.

It's one thing to criticize a culture. It's another to see that the culture being criticized is formed partly in response to other cultures, and that those cultures are, in turn, worth criticizing. This is why explaining human behavior is so difficult: the buck never stops. The explanations don't come to an obvious, final resting place. Because it's honest about this problem, "Hillbilly Elegy" is only partially polemical. At its best, it is memoiristic, sad, plangent, and puzzled. Vance recalls a day when he was twelve: he and his mother went out for a drive and got into an argument, which escalated. In a rage, she threatened to crash their car and kill them both. Eventually, after a terrified Vance hid in the back seat, she pulled over. He ran to a house by the side of the road; she followed, and was arrested and charged with domestic violence. "I remember sitting in that busy courtroom, with half a dozen other families all around," Vance writes, "and thinking that they looked just like us":

The moms and dads and grandparents didn't wear suits like the lawyers and judge. They wore sweatpants and stretchy pants and T-shirts. Their hair was a bit frizzy. And it was the first time I noticed "TV accents"-the neutral accent that so many news anchors had. The social workers and the judge and the lawyer all had TV accents. None of us did. The people who ran the courthouse were different from us. The people subjected to it were not.

Vance is describing a moment known to many kids from troubled families. For a long time, your family's pain seems to make it unique. Then, one day, you discover that it makes you part of a group. Now your family is doubly mysterious. You can see it from both the inside and the outside, as unfathomable flesh and blood but also as a social phenomenon in need of an explanation.

In search of that explanation, Vance haunted the library in high school. He "consumed books about social policy and the working poor." At sixteen, he stumbled upon William Julius Wilson's "The Truly Disadvantaged":

Though I didn't fully understand it all, I grasped the core thesis. As millions migrated north to factory jobs, the communities that sprouted up around those factories were vibrant but fragile. When the factories shut their doors, the people left behind were trapped in towns and cities that could no longer support such large populations with high-quality work. Those who could-generally the well educated, wealthy, or well connected-left, leaving behind communities of poor people. These remaining folks were the "truly disadvantaged"-unable to find good jobs on their own and surrounded by communities that offered little in the way of connections or social support.

Vance recalls wanting to write Wilson a letter telling him "that he had described my home perfectly." He didn't, of course, because Wilson was "writing about black people in the inner cities," not whites in Appalachia or the Rust Belt. Moreover, Wilson's book had left him dissatisfied. The same questions still hounded him: "Why didn't our neighbor leave that abusive man? Why did she spend her money on drugs? Why couldn't she see that her behavior was destroying her daughter?" Most mysteriously, "Why were all of these things happening not just to our neighbor but to my mom?" It's easy to read about socioeconomic trends; it's harder to square them with the people you know and love, who stand out as individuals with souls.

As a grown man, Vance talks to some of the high-school teachers in his home town. "They want us to be shepherds to these kids," one teacher says, "but no one wants to talk about the fact that many of them are raised by wolves." Conservative reviewers have quoted this sentence, using it to encapsulate, accurately, Vance's conviction that public institutions can only do so much for kids from broken homes. And yet, when Vance thinks about his own mother, father, and grandparents, he doesn't think of them as "wolves" but as human beings with free wills and noble intentions, struggling to overcome their own upbringings. He recalls stories about his mother's life in her parents' household:

Their constant fighting and alcoholism must have taken its toll on her. Even when they were children, the fighting seemed to affect my aunt and mother differently. While [my aunt] would plead with her parents to calm down, or provoke her father in order to take the heat off her mother, Mom would hide, or run away, or collapse on the floor with her hands over her ears. She didn't handle it as well as her brother and sister.

"An important question for hillbillies like me," Vance writes, is "How much is Mom's life her own fault? Where does blame stop and sympathy begin?" His conclusions are equivocal. "Mom is no villain," he thinks. "She tried desperately to be a good mother. . . . She tried to find happiness in love and work, but she listened too much to the wrong voices in her head." At the same time, he continues, "Mom deserves much of the blame. No person's childhood gives him or her a perpetual moral get-out-of-jail-free card." In adulthood, he discovers, "There is room . . . for both anger at Mom for the life she chooses and sympathy for the childhood she didn't."

Since "Hillbilly Elegy" was published, in June, Vance has given many television interviews about the book, during which he speaks, as an unofficial spokesman for the white working class, about Donald Trump. (Many of Trump's supporters, of course, are relatively affluent.) In one interview, Michael Smerconish, of CNN, pointed out the similarities between the ideas in "Hillbilly Elegy" and Barack Obama's poorly received 2008 remarks about poor white voters. ("You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania and, like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for twenty-five years and nothing's replaced them. . . . It's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy toward people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.") Hadn't Obama been right, Smerconish asked-perhaps even "ahead of his time"?

Vance conceded that Obama's comments had been "well-intentioned" and that he had named "legitimate" problems. Nonetheless, he said, Obama's comments had lacked "sympathy." Reading "Hillbilly Elegy," you see what Vance means. Vance is after a certain kind of sympathy: sympathy among equals that doesn't demean or condescend. Such sympathy can't be deterministic and categorical. In fact, it must be a little judgmental; it must see the people to whom it's extended as dignified individuals who retain their moral obligations. For Vance, it's "anger at Mom for the life she chooses"-recognition of her present-day freedom-that makes "sympathy for the childhood she didn't" meaningful and humane. That's because sympathy that fails to recognize culpability also fails to recognize potentiality. It becomes a form of giving up. If you're a politician representing a troubled community from afar, as many élite politicians must be, then it's easy to fall into this sympathy trap. At best, you can be a well-intentioned but nonjudgmental-and, therefore, condescending-outsider. Only an insider can speak about his community with honest anguish. "Hillbilly Elegy" is especially compelling because Vance writes with the sorrowful judgment of a betrayed yet loyal son.

It's through these back doors of memory and family history that "Hillbilly Elegy" arrives at its broadest subject: our hopelessly politicized approach to thinking about poverty. At least since the Moynihan Report, in 1965, Americans have tended to answer the question "Why are people poor?" by choosing one of two responses: they can either point to economic forces (globalization, immigration) or blame cultural factors (decaying families, lack of "grit"). These seem like two social-science theories about poverty-two hypotheses, which might be tested empirically-but, in practice, they are more like political fairy tales. As Kelefa Sanneh wrote earlier this year, the choice between these two explanations has long been racialized. Working-class whites are said to be poor because of outsourcing; inner-city blacks are imagined to be holding themselves back with hip-hop. The implicit theory is that culture comes from within, and so can be controlled by individuals and communities, whereas economic structures exert pressures from without, and so are beyond the control of those they affect.

This theory is useful to politicians, because political ideologies function by identifying some people as powerless and others as powerful. The truth, though, is that the "culture vs. economics" dyad is largely a fantasy. We are neither prisoners of our economic circumstances nor lords of our cultures, able to reshape them at will. It would be more accurate to say that cultural and economic forces act, with entwined and equal power, on and through all of us-and that we all have an ability, limited but real, to harness or resist them. When we pursue education, we improve ourselves both "economically" and "culturally" (and in other ways); conversely, there's nothing distinctly and intrinsically "economic" or "cultural" about the problems that afflict poor communities, such as widespread drug addiction or divorce. (If you lose your job, get divorced, and become an addict, is your addiction "economic" or "cultural" in nature?) When we debate whether such problems have a fundamentally "economic" or "cultural" cause, we aren't saying anything meaningful about the problems. We're just arguing-incoherently-about whether or not people who suffer from them deserve to be blamed for them. (We know, meanwhile, that the solutions-many, partial, and overlapping-aren't going to be exclusively "economic" or "cultural" in nature, either.)

It's odd, when you think about it, that a question a son might ask about his mother-"Where does blame stop and sympathy begin?"-is at the center of our collective political life. And yet, as American inequality has grown, that question has come to be increasingly important. When Rod Dreher asked Vance to explain the appeal of Trump to poor whites, Vance cited the fact that Trump "criticizes the factories shipping jobs overseas" while energetically defending white, working-class culture against "the condescenders" who hold it in contempt. Another way of putting this is that, for the past eight years, the mere existence of Barack Obama-a thriving African-American family man and a successful product of the urban meritocracy-has implied that the problems of poor white Americans are "cultural"; Trump has shifted their afflictions into the "economic" column. For his supporters, that is enough.

Vance is frustrated not just by this latest turn of the wheel but by the fact that the wheel keeps turning. It's true that, by criticizing "hillbilly culture," "Hillbilly Elegy" reverses the racial polarity in our debate about poverty; it's also true that, by arguing that the problems of the white working class are partly "cultural," the book strikes a blow against Trumpism. And yet it would be wrong to see Vance's book as yet another entry in our endless argument about whether this or that group's poverty is caused by "economic" or "cultural" factors. "Hillbilly Elegy" sees the "economics vs. culture" divide as a dead metaphor-a form of manipulation rather than explanation more likely to conceal the truth than to reveal it. The book is an understated howl of protest against the racialized blame game that has, for decades, powered American politics and confounded our attempts to talk about poverty.

Often, after a way of talking has obviously outlived its usefulness, a period of inarticulateness ensues; it's not yet clear how we should talk going forward. "Hillbilly Elegy" doesn't provide us with a new way of talking about poverty in post-globalization America. It does, however, suggest that it's our collective job to figure one out. As individuals, we must stop thinking about American poverty in an imaginary way; we must abandon the terms of the argument we've been having-terms designed to harness our feelings of blame and resentment for political ends, and to make us feel either falsely blameless or absurdly self-determining. "I don't know what the answer is, precisely, but I know it starts when we stop blaming Obama or Bush or faceless companies and ask ourselves what we can do to make things better," Vance writes. "We hillbillies need to wake the hell up." As do the rest of us.

Joshua Rothman is The New Yorker' s archive editor. He is also a frequent contributor to newyorker.com, where he writes about books and ideas.
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"I grew up poor, in the Rust Belt, in an Ohio steel town that has been hemorrhaging jobs and hope for as long as I can remember." That's how J. D. Vance begins one of this campaign season's saddest and most fascinating books, "Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis" (Harper).

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Anna is standing before a slammed door, chuckling. Her teenage daughter, Lucy, is on the other side, yelling about band practice and how her special t-shirt hasn't been washed. Anna suggests she put on something else.

"But I'll be the only girl there wearing the wrong thing!" she shouts.

"It's not that dirty," Anna says. "Maybe we can figure something out?"

Lucy is disinclined to figure anything out.

"You just don't understand!" she wails from behind the door.

Anna sighs. "Teenagers," she says, and walks into the living room. It's Me or the Dog is playing on the flat-screen. Her mother, Carmen, is watching, feeding her pet pug, Robin, carrots as she does. Fresh mums sit on the coffee table. A blanket is folded neatly over the back of the sofa. Anna pauses, watches the dog watching the television, sighs again, louder this time.

She has been up since daybreak. Working in eldercare, then off to a YWCA fund-raising meeting, then to her son Ernie's school for pickup, then home to make his snack, get him started on homework, and prepare a chili tamarind paste for a potluck tonight, after which she will retrieve Lucy from band practice, if Lucy will even go, given she will not be wearing the right shirt. Anna's phone rings. A friend needs her to run by the grocery, pick up some supplies for the dinner.

"Sure, no problem," she says, smiling. She hangs up, scribbles "apples, forks" on her to-do list.

"My girlfriends and I are always on the move," Anna says, pulling her hair into a loose bun. "We are like a blur, racing everywhere, doing everything, trying to survive. Just like all women."

Which is true. And not.

Anna is your typical overextended working mother-volunteering and taking care of her family, including her mom, who suffers from arthritis. She likes Maroon 5 and caramel lattes from Starbucks and wishes she were a little thinner. She wears snappy conservative pantsuits and freshens her lipstick after she eats. She dances with her husband at birthday parties, and lives in a quiet Tucson neighborhood, not far from her favorite Chinese restaurant.

She is also what some call "an illegal." A person whom official policy suggests the country would be better off without.

"Right now, I am the enemy," Anna says with some chagrin. "And not just to my teenage daughter."

America is home to an estimated 11 million unauthorized immigrants. Anna, 39, her husband, Manuel, 40, Lucy, 16, and Ernie, 12, are four of them.

Eleven years ago, Manuel lost his job repairing and building computers in Mexico. For two years, he stayed put in the border state of Sonora, looking for work. Anna searched too, but neither succeeded. Before Manuel's unemployment, the family enjoyed a relaxed, pleasurable lifestyle. Anna attended college and met friends for coffee. She and her husband had couples game nights every week. For a time Anna even ran a little gift boutique. The family vacationed in the United States, coming over during Christmas to visit her mother-a citizen by marriage-and shop.

Though Anna and her family had saved wisely, 24 months with no income proved devastating. Desperate, Manuel came to America on a tourist visa. He stayed past its expiration after he found work as a janitor and day laborer. For two years he and Anna lived apart.

"I tried to find any job I could in Mexico so he could return," Anna explains. "I applied to waitress, hostess, but I was 'overqualified.' At Carl's Jr., I was told I was too old. I cleaned, I babysat. I even wrote letters to the Mexican government. I was that person. I wanted to do everything the right way."

Anna took her children to America to visit her husband whenever she could. But it was not enough. "My family was divided. My kids were suffering."

It was during one of these routine family visits in 2003 that something unusual happened. Anna was traveling with her aunt, cousins, and other relatives, ten people total. She was handing her paperwork to Border Patrol when a wave of commotion began to ripple through the crowd. According to the Border Patrol guards, one cousin had an outstanding medical bill in the States. The whole family was detained. After hours of questioning, everyone present had their tourist visas revoked.

"I couldn't believe it," remembers Anna. "I wasn't responsible for my cousin's bill. I didn't even know about it."

When she appealed to the officials, asking them to reconsider, the head guard pointed at her cousin and said, "Hate her, not us." And just like that, Anna and her children were no longer able to visit the United States legally.

Blindsided, Anna wrote a letter to the U.S. consulate saying the action was unjust. A letter came back confirming that fact, and telling her to go ahead and apply for the visa. So she filled out the onerous paperwork, deciphering the convoluted governmental lingo, and waited. Months later she reported to her interview, handed over the $350 in fees-only to be told she wouldn't be granted a visa. "Try again in five years," the consular officer said, dismissing her.

It was then, Anna remembers, that something inside her broke.

"I was calculating how old my children would be in five years. How they would be being raised without a father. I thought about how I had done nothing wrong, committed no crime, and yet my kids were being sentenced. I was living with my grandma. We had no money. I called Manuel and he said, 'Well, now what?'"

Twelve weeks after her visa denial, Anna folded Ernie into a too-small stroller, took Lucy's hand, and walked across the border at a legal checkpoint.

"I was with two Anglo couples and their kids. There was one officer on duty. I had no papers. I just prayed and tried to act normal, like a tourist."

The officer smiled, said "Good morning," and waved Anna and her entourage through.

"I cried the minute I crossed."

Anna begins to sob.

"I still feel like I did something wrong. It isn't the way I am. I didn't want that for my kids."

She wipes her tears with her fingertips, exhales slowly through her mouth.

"People say there are always other options," she says, her voice cracking. "But I couldn't find any."

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Hiding in Plain Sight: Inside the Life of an Undocumented Immigrant

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Imagine being taken from your family, denied a phone call, and dropped off in the desert, miles from home all for the crime of wanting a better life. Welcome to the new normal for America's undocumented immigrants. One woman's story.

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From the Huff Post: A Satire on Becoming a Minority

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From the Huff Post: A Satire on Becoming a Minority

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This video is seriously playful. Consider watching this if you have earbuds.

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According to the U.S. Census Bureau, white people have another 30 years to enjoy being America's majority race. But come 2045, the white population will make up less than 50 percent of the American population for the first time ever.

So what's a privileged white person to do? Luckily for Caucasians everywhere, "The HuffPost Show" put together a helpful guide to ease the white transition into life as a minority.

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According to the U.S. Census Bureau, white people have another 30 years to enjoy being America's majority race. But come 2045, the white population will make up less than 50 percent of the American population for the first time ever. So what's a privileged white person to do?