Literary analysis of memoirs "Hillbilly Elegy" by J.D. Vance and "The Color of Water: A Black Man's Tribute to His White Mother" by James McBride regarding how the main characters Ruth, Vance, James, and Bev correctly and incorrectly use psychological coping mechanisms and strategies to deal with stress, including crises and Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) as well as non-crisis stressors. Copyright: All rights reserved. Downloading, screenshots, and any and all forms of reproduction and/or distribution are prohibited.

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Thalia Pope
ENGL 495
Joey Franklin
17 August 2017
Psychological Coping in Hillbilly Elegy and Color of Water
In D.C.’s National Gallery of Art, there hangs an enormous painting from the rococo era that,
at first glance, seems to be nothing but blue sky, puffed, smoky, clouds, and lush forestry. Only
as you step closer do you realize that there are tiny figures at the bottom: delicate, pale women
dressed in silky, enormously skirted dresses, lounging about and enjoying the sun, one woman
almost seemingly flying, gliding—lazily elegant—on a roped swing. The painting is pure bliss,
pure tranquility, and was created by Jean-Honoré Fragonard, the well-renowned rococo painter
of The Swing in 1767 and then this likewise-titled piece about ten years later.
I start with this painting not because of its imagery but because of its context. I first
learned about Fragonard in an art history course during my freshman year of university, and
despite his obviously detailed work, the clear pains he took to illustrate the luscious greenery
and almost ethereal dresses and silks, what I remember most clearly about this painter is the
way my professor stood at the front of the class and criticized the impracticality,
ludicrousness, and frivolousness of fluffy dresses in a forest environment. “Art in the rococo
era,” she sniffed—or maybe just “said,” but I hear her sniff in my mind’s theater—“is known
for its escapism.” Escapism, as we would learn, was the psychological tendency to avoid
unwanted realities, turning to things like entertainment or fantasy in order to “escape.” The

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French aristocracy turned to rococo styles, according to my professor, to escape the political
and social anxieties surrounding a king who lost several wars, ceded land to other countries,
and tried to impose new taxes on the upper classes. Modern equivalents might be Netflix,
YouTube videos, or Instagram; mine are the fantasy realms of Japanese anime and Korean
mangwa.
However, escapism is only one way of many that people choose to react to unpleasant
circumstances, and fantasy/entertainment aren’t the only means to practice avoidance coping—
the psychological term for choosing to ignore or avoid dealing with a stressor. I find this
concept of avoidance fascinating and relevant to both myself and the many people around me;
I also see its relevance implied in the daily headlines reporting violence and crime. Memoirs
like The Color of Water and Hillbilly Elegy make clear the contemporary relevance and
significance of avoidance coping, and it is these memoirs’ narratives and patterns—describing
both mother and son as they push aside, ignore, and leave behind unfortunate or unwanted
realities for “something better”—that I’d like to trace and comment on within this paper.
The stories of James, Ruth, J.D., and Bev suggest there is no such thing as a true or
permanent “escape,” since it’s not quite possible to entirely forget or break free from the
influence of the past. As such, it might be argued that their uses of avoidance coping prove
ineffective or futile. However, Hillbilly Elegy and The Color of Water suggest that a healthier
and more attainable kind of escape is the obtainment of enough freedom to both acknowledge,
and live in spite of, the past—and that avoidance coping can play an important role in
obtaining that freedom. This is because by examining these memoirs’ characters and their

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struggles for self, we ultimately see that avoidance behaviors are most successful and likely to
lead to improvement when applied to crisis situations such as poverty or abuse and eventually
paired with introspection and active coping strategies that confront and engage the stressor.
Coping is most easily defined as the manner in which individuals voluntarily react to
stress, but there are a few different ways of examining and organizing the different coping
mechanisms. According to renowned psychologist Richard Lazarus, who largely influenced
contemporary views on the topic, coping breaks down into two categories: problem-focused
coping, which attempts to address the exterior stressor directly, and emotional-focused coping,
which focuses on the way one thinks or feels about the stressor (Lazarus 167–68). However,
other psychologists such as Wadsworth et al. organize coping behaviors into actions/thoughts
that engage stressors, and those that avoid them, with Lazarus’ two original categories falling
under the former (Wadsworth et al. 14). For the purposes of this paper, I’ll be treating coping1
as it deconstructs into these two larger categories of engagement and avoidance.
While avoidance coping often has negative connotations and is often considered
dysfunctional, in certain circumstances and in moderation it can be beneficial, healthy, and
even necessary. As psychologists Johannessen, Engedal, and Thorsen note, this is particularly
true “when control of the situation is not possible,” such as for children in high-stress, crisis
situations such as poverty, abuse, homelessness, or other adverse childhood experiences
[ACEs](Johannessen et al. 9). Indeed, it’s noted that by “engaging in positive activities”—such
Lazarus’ two original categories have been revised by Wadsworth et al. as two types of “engagement”1
coping: primary control coping, which focuses on creating change, and secondary control coping, which
focuses on adaptation.

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as exercising, hobbies, and visiting friends—children can “distract themselves from …
uncontrollable source[s] of stress,” in ACE environments and give them a “break from …
stress while re-engaging their attention” (Wadsworth et al. 14). This is essential because high-
stress, crisis situations like poverty and other ACEs lead to “a variety of problems … such as
family conflict, frequent changes and transitions, and family and neighborhood violence,” and
avoidance coping helps children to alleviate some of the associated anxieties (13).
It is noteworthy that many of these listed issues were faced by Vance as a child and
young teenager: living with his mother as a child meant “[a] revolving door of father
figures” (Vance 88), financial strife and marital conflict (71), living in seven homes in the
space of about six years (150), and “[o]n top of all that were the drugs, the domestic violence
case, children’s services prying into our lives, and Papaw dying” (150). This lack of stability
perhaps explains why knowing he “could always go to Mamaw’s house if [he] needed to …
made all the difference,” and that the ability to escape and leave at any time provided a
necessary “safety valve” for the anxiety and anger caused by such a toxic home environment
(120). Avoidance coping (going to Mamaw’s) in this case provides Vance with some much-
needed relief and stability, and ultimately it’s his escape to the Marine Corps and then to
university that makes him “able to escape the worst of [his] culture’s inheritance” of poverty
and pessimism (253).
Similarly, Ruth’s childhood provides examples of when and how avoidance coping can
be beneficial. After all, she explains that she was required to work long hours as a child laborer
at the family store (McBride 41) and felt trapped as an interpreter and caretaker for her

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crippled mother, who couldn’t speak English and “had nobody [else] to turn to” (199); worst
of all, she was regularly sexually molested (42, 157) and her father was abusive towards nearly
everyone in the family (41). Ruth explains that while she “never starved for food” as a child,
she “was starving for love and affection” (83). To escape her unfortunate home life as a child,
she spent as much time as possible with her friend Frances, “sneak[ing] over to her house” for
the afternoon or “tak[ing] pennies from the store cash register so [they] could go” watch
movies at the local theater; she explains that they also “spent a lot of afternoons sitting on the
headstones talking” in the local cemetery after school, and instead of being afraid of the
deceased, “It seemed like the easiest, most natural thing in the world” (81–82). Ultimately
continuing this behavior of avoidance coping and escapism, Ruth’s final departure to New
York allowed her to “have opinions of [her] own” (154), to have “[her] world expanded
because of Dennis” and his love and support (234), and to embrace a new faith that “never let
[her] down” and allowed her to find the comfort, forgiveness, and sense of community she
desperately needed (235).
While Vance’s and Ruth’s avoidance coping served them well as children to protect
themselves from their parents and from the fragility of their home lives, applying such
strategies to non-crisis, more day-to-day situations is problematic. A study on adult survivors
of childhood sexual abuse explains that survivors of certain ACEs tend to “generalize to a
preferred coping pattern throughout life” or essentially reuse the coping strategies used in
childhood trauma to deal with less severe and more mundane stressors. This ultimately can
“impair normal development and functioning” (Wilson 121), but the idea that doing so can be

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effective arises because of what psychologists call negative schema formation. Essentially,
children take the lessons they learn from their home environment and apply them to other
areas of their life, and childhood maltreatment in particular “correlate[s] with disconnection/
rejection schemas” (Rezaei et al. 412). Rezaei et al. explain that “the early maladaptive
schemas” that result from ACEs and child maltreatment “develop behavioral (e.g., avoidance)
and emotional (e.g., emotional schemas) maladaptive coping styles” (408). This is evident in
both memoirs, as Vance, for example, explains that the inability to trust his mother and father-
figures taught him the “lesson … that you can’t depend on people” in general (Vance 89), and
Ruth teaches her children that “You only have one or two good friends in life,” because such
was her own experience (McBride 164). Such generalizations also apply to stress-management
skills as well. Rezaei’s study notes that “early schemas” developed in childhood “mediate
between maladaptive coping styles … and distress” (Rezaei et al. 412); in other words,
childhood experiences affect how stress is handled later on in life. In particular, Wilson notes,
survivors of ACEs tend to “overuse avoidance as a way to cope with stress” in adulthood
(Wilson 105, emphasis added).
We can see a case study of this in the example of Hillbilly Elegy: after all, Vance’s
techniques of avoidance coping served him well as a child to protect himself from his mother
and the fragility of his home life, but much less so when used to manage lesser, more mundane
stressors such as school and romantic relationships. He explains that at one point, his
avoidance of school via truancy and drug use meant he “was much closer to dropping out [out
of school] than [he] was to anything else” (Vance 130), and even in adulthood, his childhood

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expectations regarding romantic relationships (and their transience) detrimentally affect not
only his ability to manage a relationship with Usha but arguably takes a toll on his sense of
self-worth. After all, he describes feeling “reduced” to a “morass of … stress, sadness, fear,
[and] anxiety” when contemplating how to create a stable relationship with her, and to deal
with the unwanted emotions, he tries to use avoidance tactics, attempting to “withdraw and get
away … [by trying] to break everything off multiple times” (Vance 224).
Similarly, Ruth’s escapism and habitual avoidance of home proved stabilizing while
still living under Tateh’s roof, but continuing such coping behaviors prove detrimental when
out of his reach. For example, when she lives with Bubeh in the Bronx, she becomes restless
and finds that “Bubeh reminded [her] too much of what [she] was and where [she] came
from,” so her response is to alternate between living in the Bronx and “fooling around [in
Harlem] … just trying to bury [her] past and get away from [her] father” (McBride 175–76).
However, Tateh is nowhere nearby, and this escapism becomes problematic when it becomes
clear her “fooling around” is actually “run[ning] around with … a pimp” and being “lea[d]
around by the nose” (176)—and, more than anything, she’s become so apathetic she “didn’t
have any objection to it” (175). Passivity plays an integral role in coping because it is a form
of learned helplessness, which both derives from and increases one’s sense of powerlessness.
Powerlessness and helplessness come from believing, respectively, that “one’s own actions
will not significantly affect an outcome” and that one “lack[s] control over [the] current

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situation or immediate happening” (Drew 333). By nearly giving in to this learned2
helplessness and by using the same avoidance coping mechanisms in her new life with Babeh
as she did with Tateh, Ruth thus nearly ends up becoming a prostitute and sacrificing her sense
of self for the “fast life” (McBride 193).
One of the problems with continuing to apply avoidance coping beyond crisis
situations and ACEs is that avoidance coping is not designed to be a permanent or sole
solution, but a temporary one: something to be combined with other, more active coping
mechanisms. Perhaps that’s why my professor so despised the rococo practice of escapism—
because she believed that artists like Fragonard weren’t coping effectively, but merely
rejecting and denying their political realities. One study that demonstrated this kind of mixed-
strategy approach examined high-stress parent-child relationships, in which it was noted that
the coping strategies that produced the most resilience and sense of improvement had
combined avoidance coping with more active and engaged coping behaviors, such as
acceptance:
The outcome was the result of a mixture of actions taken by the informants
(such as moving away), changes in the parent’s and the family’s situations, and
cognitive and emotional adaptations. … We found that avoidance … [allows]
Individuals [to] portion out what they are able to consider and cope with …
The difference seems to be a matter of emphasis: “I can’t change anything” is powerlessness, while “I can’t2
change anything” is helplessness. The relation is cyclical; increased sense of powerlessness leads to increased
sense of helplessness, and vice versa.

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[then] gradually come to a more realistic acceptance of the [situation] and its
implications. (Johannessen et al. 9)
This particular study concludes that “almost all the informants felt that their life situation had
improved” and had acquired greater “resilience” through detachment and other coping
strategies (10). As such, we realize that avoidance coping is most successful in high-stress
situations when it’s used to put the stressor only temporarily on hold, not indefinitely, and then
is combined with other, more active/engagement-level coping mechanisms, such as
acceptance, reassessment, and integration.3
McBride explains that his use of avoidance coping as a teenager ended up only making
things worse. He describes how, in his teenage years of alcohol and weed abuse, truancy, and
shoplifting, he was in his own way “running from the truth” that his “mother was falling apart”
(McBride 163), but that such running only provided temporary relief. His escape into drugs
and alcohol “helped [him] to forget any pain,” yes, but ultimately, the forgetfulness doesn’t
last—it only helps to “smother” his feelings, instead of removing them, and meanwhile permit
“the pain and guilt [to] increas[e]” in the meanwhile (142).
Understanding that avoidance doesn’t work as a long-term coping strategy is perhaps
why James is so insistent on having Ruth tell her story, continuing to push her for over eight
years to “crack [the door] open and peek inside,” to “die and be reborn again” and experience
Acceptance is the first step required of any kind of active coping. It’s defined as when one “accepts the3
reality of a stressful situation,” is considered the opposite of denial, and is noted to be “particularly
important in circumstances in which the stressor is something that must be accommodated to” rather
than changed directly (Carver et al. 270). Integration is the step that reconciles cognitive dissonance,
making necessary changes to one’s behaviors to accommodate a newly accepted fact.

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the “cleansing element” of revisiting and explaining her past (McBride 269). James explains
that now that the book is complete, “Mommy has changed[;] … What’s different is that she
can face the past now. After years of saying, ‘Don’t tell my business,’ she’s reached a point
where she now says, ‘It doesn’t matter’” (270); she has, in essence, stopped her avoidance
coping and gone through the process of acceptance, even integration. And perhaps it’s why
Vance returns to Middletown to help his own mother—to help Bev realize, for herself, that
“you can keep reality at bay only so long” (18). After all, for both James and Vance, the
process of writing their memoirs arguably was their own lengthy, difficult form of active
coping, and they’ve come to see the fruits of introspection, acceptance, and integration. It’s
logical that they wish their mothers to likewise partake.
But switching from a disengaged coping mechanism, such as avoidance, to a more
active form, such as acceptance or integration, requires what’s called coping resources. Coping
resources would be best defined as the means and tools—physical, financial, emotional,
mental, social, or otherwise—available to a person in order to deal with and overcome a
stressor. Examples include things like health; access to money; knowledge and skills; familial
support and mentor figures; and attitudes, such as optimism, hardiness, or self-efficacy
(Greenaway et al. 323). Perhaps the most important of these are the social and interpersonal
coping resources, which psychologist James House divides into four types: emotional (the
empathy, love, trust, and care one receives); instrumental (tangible assistance and aid);
informational (advice, suggestions, referrals, etc.); and appraisal (criticism one uses for self-
assessment) (House and Kahn 102). After all, for Vance, the coping resources available to him

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to escape poverty and learned helplessness and ignorance and navigate the social ladder were
primarily people: Mamaw and Papaw and Lindsay; the Marine Corps officers who helped him
make grounded financial decisions; Amy Chua, his Yales professor and mentor; Usha. Ruth
depended on Dennis, then Hunter, then her religious and black communities for social support,
being cut off from family—but she also deeply relied on faith. James found resources with
mentors like his band director, Mrs. Dawson, Aunt Jack, and even Chicken Man. Bev had,
well, her revolving door of boyfriends and husbands.
One type of coping resource is the mental/emotional capacity to realize something’s
wrong and decide act accordingly. Bev is an interesting example to examine here, since her
cycle of alcohol and substance addiction both resulted from and contributed to her inability to
escape her own avoidance coping, and impedes her own ability to see the problems of her
actions. Her social coping resources were few to begin with—mostly that of her husbands and
boyfriends—but even more importantly, her very self awareness, cognitive ability, and the
clarity to conduct introspection and to use the resources that are provided, she impedes with
her repeated escapism into alcohol and drugs. As James says in hindsight, “I wanted to give up
weed, but couldn’t. Weed was my friend, weed kept me running from the truth” (McBride
163). But as Vance’s cousin points out, “only by admitting … [one’s] problems [can] people
hope to change them” (Vance 20).
My dad has struggled with his health for almost as long as I can remember. He is, in
terms of activity and diet, one of the healthiest men I know—he runs, road-bikes, mountain-
bikes, swims, plays tennis and racquetball, goes to the gym, hikes, has completed half-

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marathons and sprint triathlons. He has committed to numberless diets, joined fitness clubs,
and kept track of calories via apps. Yet despite all this, his body refuses to lose significant
weight. He regularly has insomnia, chronic fatigue, high blood pressure and, he recently
discovered, hormonal deficiencies.
Dad’s done his homework—he’s seen dozens of doctors, medical professionals, and
specialists over the years, and he’s left most of them scratching their heads. It’s only been in
the last year and half that he read one doctor’s book on wellbeing, Adrenal Reset, that seemed
to help, and he started seeing the author as his primary doctor. The diagnosis: he’s stressed.
But the book convinced him to take some things off his plate, to meditate and set aside time
for the self each day, to eat what he wanted and when and stop calorie counting, and suddenly,
he started feeling like he had energy again. The doctor, after some in-person visits, told him
that the other medical professionals’ advice—to increase exercise—had actually worsened the
state of stress on his body.
I bring up my dad because he’s always been an example to me, in both what it means to
be successful and what it means to climb out of a slump. His health has been a crisis for him,
not as critical as the ACEs that have haunted Vance and Ruth, but a personal battle
nonetheless. And an important aspect of dealing with crises—ACEs or otherwise—seems to be
knowing what your mind and body can and cannot handle, to do what you can then accept and
adapt to the rest.
Part of Dad’s commitment to his heath has been reorganizing how he deals with tasks
and creating routines to help him destress. One of these routines nowadays is that every night,

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this 6'3", fully-bearded, 300-plus-pound man—a man who loves motorbikes, and carries a
handgun in his door of his diesel 4x4 truck, and has rebuilt the fence in our backyard at least
twice—puts on his striped pajamas, leaves his phone in the living room, and goes to bed with a
mystery novel in one hand and a cup of “nighty-night calming tea” in the other. To be sure,4
he’s still far from “chill,” but he’s getting closer to being healthier and happier. His music
tastes have shifted from rock to jazz; he’s learned to ask for help, to start seeing a regular
counselor, to acknowledge his own weaknesses and limitations, to only write one item on his
to-do list at a time.
For most of Dad’s life, he’s tended to ignore the biology behind weight loss, stress, and
anxiety in favor of the belief that sheer willpower and force of personality will be enough to
reach his goals. But it’s not a dichotomy of willpower vs. fate—it’s almost always a mix of
both, and he’s learned in the last year and a half that he just can’t ignore what he can’t control,
but rather accept the reality and work within it. Much of his sense of self-worth, I think, has
been built around this sense that he can achieve anything so long as he has the determination;
learning that there are limits to what he can do has made this rough for him. He’s been
avoiding the truth of it until only recently, but the reality is that his body’s suffering a crisis
state of stress, even if he doesn’t mentally feel like he is or should be.
Like most things, avoidance alone isn’t unhealthy but rather about moderation. As
mentioned at the beginning of the paper, using avoidance as a temporary distraction via going
The quote is from a text message; his words, not mine. Sometimes he reads a self-help book instead of4
a mystery. For example, the current novel he is reading is called The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck.

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to a friends’, or exercising, or, perhaps, painting a beautiful piece of escapist landscape, is fine
—even healthy—if not used with the intent to make the stressor “disappear” but rather to help
“reset” one’s mental ability to address a stressor. And that requires the maturity to know when
to stop the “reset,” when to close Netflix or shut off the computer and actually get to work.
Analyzing Hillbilly Elegy and Color of Water through this psychological lens clearly unveils
how individuals such as Ruth, Vance, James, and Bev use avoidance coping at different stages
of their lives for both survival and sanity, utilize or impede their available coping resources,
and ultimately demonstrate how avoidance or disengagement strategies only bring
improvement to health and wellbeing when applied to crisis-like circumstances and combine
them with more active engagement coping methods and coping resources.

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