The moment the trailer for Netflix's Hillbilly Elegy dropped, controversy immediately surfaced. Director Ron Howard's dramatic sequences of this true story appeared to be obvious Oscar bait for Amy Adams and Glenn Close, longtime contenders for Academy Awards. But the bigger reason the film received flak was because people felt that it pandered to "poverty porn." This criticism isn't quite new, though. The book that the movie is based on, J.D. Vance's

Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis

, has faced similar pushback since its 2016 publication.

The memoir follows Vance's childhood as a boy growing up with the Appalachian values of his Kentucky family and explores how these values related to the social problems that he witnessed while living in Middletown, Oh with his grandparents. His family endured many troubles, including domestic violence and drug addiction. Many of his neighbors were jobless and impoverished.