Heartland: a memoir of working hard and being broke in the richest country on earth
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Published Date :
Published By Scribe UK
ISBN : 9781911617730
Category : North America
Format : Paperback
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‘A deeply humane memoir with crackles of clarifying insight, Heartland is one of a growing number of important works … that together merit their own section in non-fiction aisles across the country: America’s post-industrial decline. Or, perhaps, simply: class … Smarsh shows how the false promise of the “American dream” was used to subjugate the poor’

‘[An] evocative memoir.’

‘Sarah Smarsh describes her childhood growing up in a cycle of poverty, challenging the reader to consider modern-day America from a different perspective. Combining a thought-provoking and deeply personal tale with powerful analysis and cultural commentary, this is a hard-hitting read.’

‘“Class is an illusion with real consequences”, Smarsh writes in this candid and courageous memoir of growing up in a family of working-class farmers in Kansas during the 1980s and ’90s … Smarsh's raw and intimate narrative exposes a country of economic inequality that "has failed its children.’ STARRED REVIEW

‘[A] powerful message of class bias ... A potent social and economic message [is] embedded within an affecting memoir.’ STARRED REVIEW

‘You might think that a book about growing up on a poor Kansas farm would qualify as ‘sociology,’ and Heartland certainly does … But this book is so much more than even the best sociology. It is poetry ― of the wind and snow, the two-lane roads running through the wheat, the summer nights when work-drained families drink and dance under the prairie sky.’

‘Sarah Smarsh is one of America’s foremost writers on class. Heartland is about an impossible dream for anyone born into poverty ― a leap up in class, doubly hard for a woman. Smarsh’s journey from a little girl into adulthood in Kansas speaks to tens of thousands of girls now growing up poor in what so many dismiss as ‘flyover country.’ Heartland offers a fresh and riveting perspective on the middle of the nation all too often told through the prism of men.’

‘Sarah Smarsh ― tough-minded and rough-hewn ― draws us into the real lives of her family, barely making it out there on the American plains. There’s not a false note. Smarsh, as a writer, is Authentic with a capital A … This is just what the world needs to hear.’

‘Journalist Smarsh uses her background growing up in rural Kansas to illustrate the economic plight of the rural working poor … Will appeal to readers who enjoy memoirs and to sociologists. While Smarsh ends on a hopeful note, she offers a searing indictment of how the poor are viewed and treated in this country.’

‘Growing up as one of the working poor has become a familiar theme of memoirs of late, but this book is more than a female-authored Hillbilly Elegy (2016). Smarsh employs an unusual and effective technique, throughout the book addressing her daughter, who does not, in reality, exist. Rather, she's the future that seemed destined for Smarsh, the same future that had been destined for and realised by all the women in her family … Elucidating reading on the challenges many face in getting ahead.’

Sarah Smarsh has covered socioeconomic class, politics, and public policy for  The GuardianThe New York Times, NewYorker.com, Harpers.org, The Texas Observer, and many others. She recently was a Joan Shorenstein Fellow at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government. A former professor of nonfiction writing, Smarsh is a frequent speaker on economic inequality and related media narratives. She lives in Kansas.  Heartland  is her first book.



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