JD Vance’s ‘Hillbilly Elegy’ Pulled at Pentagon-Run Schools Because It Might Run Afoul of Trump Executive Orders
AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin
The memoir of Vice President JD Vance was pulled from schools run by the Department of Defense over concerns that its presence violates executive orders from President Donald Trump.
Written in 2016, Hillbilly Elegy was a New York Times bestseller. In it, Vance wrote of his modest upbringing in rural America – largely by his grandmother – at a time when his mother was suffering from substance abuse. The book made Vance a minor celebrity.
But the book is not to be found in at least some of the schools attended by the tens of thousands of schoolchildren of active-duty U.S. soldiers around the world, according to Task & Purpose, a news publication focused on the military.
“Librarians in the schools of 66,000 children of American service members are being directed to pull books ‘potentially related to gender ideology or discriminatory equity ideology topics’ at Department of Defense-run schools,” according to a memo viewed by the website.
“Among the books selected for review were 2003’s Kite Runner, a story about a boy growing up in Afghanistan amid the rise of the Taliban by Khaled Hosseini, and 2016’s Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis, by Vice President JD Vance about his upbringing in Ohio as part of a white working-class community,” the site reported.
The Feb. 6 memo instructed teachers, librarians, and other school officials to review their facilities’ books to make sure they comply with two executive orders regarding emphasis on gender identities instead of sex, and “ending racial indoctrination.”
“Some librarians are taking it high and right and moving lots and lots of things and other librarians are going ‘No, it only applies to this book,’” one anonymous librarian told Task & Purpose. “Without this guidance, you cover your butt but you interpret it how you interpret it.”
Officials charged with reviewing books were given until Feb. 18 to comply with the executive orders, but they now have until March 3, according to the librarian.
