America loves dreamers, strivers, and good stories. In the fall of 2016, I was bursting with excitement and anticipation. I had just written a memoir and was looking forward to its release. In the 1980s, I was raised by a single mother in and around Los Angeles, California. I overcame poverty to become the first person in my family to graduate high school, attend college, and earn a doctorate. I felt I had something to say.
Born Bright was my attempt to crack open a world very few had ever visited and explain why some do – and others don’t – make it to the other side of the tracks.
Little did I know a white guy from Ohio was writing his version of the same story. His name was J.D. Vance, and he was from Middletown, Ohio, where about 1 in 4 people live in poverty. Vance had overcome hardship, abuse, and neglect to graduate from Yale Law School.
We were winners no matter which side of the aisle you occupy. For Democrats, we are proof that America is a place where you can make it if you try, regardless of where you start. For Republicans, our formative years support their claims that people are poor because of bad choices, laziness, and intergenerational pathologies, such as out-of-wedlock births, crime, or drug and alcohol abuse.
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