Free Ebook Heartland: A Memoir of Working Hard and Being Broke in the Richest Country on Earth, by Sarah Smarsh
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Heartland: A Memoir of Working Hard and Being Broke in the Richest Country on Earth, by Sarah Smarsh
Free Ebook Heartland: A Memoir of Working Hard and Being Broke in the Richest Country on Earth, by Sarah Smarsh
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Amazon.com Review
An Amazon Best Book of September 2018: In this furious, regretful, and loving memoir, Sarah Smarsh examines the life of America’s rural poor through the microcosm of her extended family. Growing up working-class white on the Kansas plains, Smarsh enjoyed the freedom of a country childhood, but witnessed the hideous legacy of poverty in her relatives’ untreated illnesses, unsafe job conditions, abusive marriages, and addictions to everything from cigarettes to opioids. Smarsh, now a writer and professor, created a stable professional life for herself using the same work ethic she saw in her parents, with talents they themselves might have developed had they been able to continue in school. What made the biggest difference: federal grants for first-generation students, and her determination to avoid early pregnancy. Her life’s work, she felt, “was to be heard,†rather than to become a mother, though the daughter she might have had feels so real that Heartland takes the form of an anguished letter to her. For Smarsh, one of the cruelest blows the poor suffer is society’s assessment that they somehow deserve less than others. “People of all backgrounds experience a sense of poorness—not enough of this or that thing that money can’t buy. But financial poverty is the one shamed by society, culture, unchecked capitalism, public policy, our very way of speaking.†Heartland will make you check your privilege before you refer to anyone as “white trash†or “red neck,†and if you’re standing at a polling station, you might hear Smarsh’s voice in your ear. Her portrayal of what it feels like to be poor in America will persuade you that it’s not a fate any child should be born into. —Sarah Harrison Smith, Amazon Book Review
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Review
"A deeply humane memoir that crackles with clarifying insight, Heartland is one of a growing number of important works – including Matthew Desmond’s Evicted and Amy Goldstein’s Janesville – that together merit their own section in nonfiction aisles across the country: America’s postindustrial decline. . . . With deft primers on the Homestead Act, the farming crisis of the ‘80s, and Reaganomics, Smarsh shows how the false promise of the ‘American dream’ was used to subjugate the poor. It’s a powerful mantra." —New York Times Book Review "Heartland is [Smarsh's] map of home, drawn with loving hands and tender words. This is the nation’s class divide brought into sharp relief through personal history ... Heartland is a thoughtful, big-hearted tale ... Heartland is a welcome interruption in the national silence that hangs over the lives of the poor and a repudiation of the culture of shame that swamps people who deserve better." —Washington Post "Something about Sarah Smarsh’s writing makes you light up inside. You feel her joy and grief, fury and hope ... That is how I felt reading Smarsh’s book: as if the world could wait until I got to the end. Smarsh’s book belongs with Ta-Nehisi Coates’ Between the World and Me and J.D. Vance’s Hillbilly Elegy as a volume with a transformative vision—a message for a blind and uncaring America, which needs to wake up. Hopefully we will not just open our eyes. Hopefully we will also change. —The American Conservative "Smart, nuanced and atmospheric ... Heartland deepens our understanding of the crushing ways in which class shapes possibility in this country. It's an unsentimental tribute to the working-class people Smarsh knows — the farmers, office clerks, trash collectors, waitresses — whose labor is often invisible or disdained." —NPR Books "In her sharply-observed, big-hearted memoir, Heartland, Smarsh chronicles the human toll of inequality, her own childhood a case study ... what this book offers is a tour through the messy and changed reality of the American dream, and a love letter to the unruly but still beautiful place she called home." —Boston Globe "Sarah Smarsh's intelligent, affecting memoir ... [asks]: What's the matter with the American dream? ... Understanding widening wealth inequality in our nation is a project with which anyone who has a conscience should be concerned — a robust, expansive middle class is vital to democracy, and arguably to the functioning of our particular Constitution. Smarsh’s Heartland is a book we need: an observant, affectionate portrait of working-class America that possesses the power to resonate with readers of all classes." —San Francisco Chronicle "Combining heartfelt memoir with eye-opening social commentary, Smarsh braids together the stories of four generations of her rural red-state family." —People "In a memoir written with loving candor, the daughter of generations of serially impoverished Kansas wheat farmers and working-poor single mothers chronicles a family's unshakeable belief in the American dream and explains why it couldn't help but fail them." —Ms. Magazine “Heartland recounts five generations of Smarsh exploits in the farmlands of Kansas, from pioneer days to the Obama era, when the author finally breaks into the middle class. The book is a personal, decades-long story of America’s coordinated assault on its underclass ... There is rich soil in America’s flyover states, and if we follow Smarsh’s path, we will find families like mine and the author’s, full of sensible, resilient women who may be disenfranchised, but who are also uniquely poised and equipped to aid in the revolution, and in our collective liberation." —L.A. Times "Smarsh’s book, a soul-baring meditation on poverty and class in America, tells the stories of her family’s wounded women, their farming men and her own wrenching choice to snap the three-generation cycle of teenage motherhood into which she was born ... Her moving memoir can be seen as the female, Great Plains flip side to 2016’s best-selling Hillbilly Elegy by J.D. Vance: a loving yet unflinching look at the marginalized people who grow America’s food, build its houses and airplanes but never seem to share fully in its prosperity." —New York Post, Best of 2018 "The subtitle of Sarah Smarsh's "Heartland" is "A Memoir of Working Hard and Being Broke in the Richest Country on Earth." Her timing is impeccable, given the country's growing divide around class. Her goal is nothing less than disputing the belief that some people — specifically "white trash" — are just meant to be, that the bad choices they make regarding sex or alcohol or jobs or education are, well, practically in their DNA and not the result of cultural forces ... This is a provocative, well-researched book for our times." —Minneapolis Star-Tribune "Smarsh seamlessly interweaves [her family's] tales with her own experiences and the political happenings of the day to tell a story that feels complete, honest and often poetic ... Heartland shines brightest in moments like these, when colorful anecdotes bring childhood memories vividly to life. Beyond their entertainment value, these stories flesh out nuanced characters in complex situations, dispelling stereotypes about the working class. Smarsh bookends these engaging tales with social commentary and historical information ... Heartland draws its strength from its storytelling and authority from its context and commentary." —Texas Observer "Part memories, part economic analysis, part sociological treatise, “Heartland” ties together various threads of American society of the last 40 years ... Smarsh’s book is persuasive not only for the facts she marshals, but also because of the way she expresses [them]. " —St. Louis Post-Dispatch "An important, timely work that details a family, a landscape, and a country that has changed dramatically since Smarsh’s birth in 1980. Heartland puts a very human face on the issue of economic inequality while also serving as an outstretched hand of sorts across the economic divide, seeking to connect readers from all economic backgrounds through a shared American story." —Iowa City Gazette "Reflects on epic issues and injustices of class, poverty, work, and coming-of-age ... Smarsh expands the conversation into the intimate territory of women's lives, examining the tribe of struggling, wounded, defiant, and strong Kansans into which she was born." —Women's Review of Books "Heartland is an important book for this moment ... Smarsh emerges as a writer, most potently, in her vivid encounters with the ironies of working-class life — her reflections on what it means to live poor can turn startlingly poetic." —EntertainmentWeekly.com "A poignant look at growing up in a town 30 miles from the nearest city; learning the value and satisfaction of hard, blue-collar work, and then learning that the rest of the country see that work as something to be pitied; watching her young mother's frustration with living at the "dangerous crossroads of gender and poverty" and understanding that such a fate might be hers, too. This idea is the thread that Smarsh so gracefully weaves throughout the narrative; she addresses the hypothetical child she might or might not eventually have and in doing so addresses all that the next generation Middle Americans living in poverty will face." —Buzzfeed "You might have read Sarah Smarsh's viral New York Times op-ed, which deconstructed the myth of the "aggrieved laborer: male, Caucasian, conservative, racist, sexist" with reference to the experiences and opinions of her working-class father. In this memoir, she fully explores the impact of poverty on her family." —Elle.com "The difficulty of transcending poverty is the message behind this personal history of growing up in the dusty farmlands of Kansas, where "nothing was more painful ... than true things being denied" ... The takeaway? The working poor don't need our pity; they need to be heard above the din of cliché and without so-called expert interpretation. Smarsh's family are expert enough to correct any misunderstandings about their lives." —Oprah.com "Startlingly vivid ... an absorbing, important work in a country that needs to know more about itself." —Christian Science Monitor "Brave and heart-wrenching, this book gives a voice to a group of people too easy to ignore." —Columbus Dispatch "Smarsh’s family history, tracing generations of teen mothers and Kansas farmer-laborers, forsakes detailed analysis of Trumpland poverty in favor of a first-person perspective colored by a sophisticated (if general) understanding of structural inequality. But most importantly, her project is shot through with compassion and pride for the screwed-over working class, even while narrating her emergence from it, diving into college instead of motherhood." —Vulture "Sarah Smarsh looks at class divides in the United States while sharing her own story of growing up in poverty before ultimately becoming a fellow at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. Her memoir doesn’t just focus on her own story; it also examines how multiple generations of her family were affected by economic policies and systems." —Bustle "In her memoir, journalist Sarah Smarsh offers a stark and timely look at the lives of the working poor ... Smarsh holds the deeply personal stories from her life growing up in rural Kingman County against the lens of Reaganomics. She maps her family’s lives alongside the demise of the family farm, defunded schools, and stagnant wages of the 1980s and 1990s." —The Hutchinson News "If you’re working towards a deeper understanding of our ruptured country, then Sarah Smarsh’s memoir and examination of poverty in the American heartland is an essential read. Smarsh chronicles her childhood on the poverty line in Kansas in the ‘80s and ‘90s, and the marginalization of people based on their income. When did earning less mean a person was worth less?" —Refinery29 "Searing, timely and blazingly eloquent, Heartland challenges readers to look beyond tired stereotypes of the rural Midwest and is a testament to the value (on many levels) of "flyover country."" —Shelf Awareness "Blending memoir and reportage, a devastating and smart examination of class and the working poor in America, particularly the rural working poor. An excellent portrait of an often overlooked group." —BookRiot.com "Candid and courageous ... Smarsh's raw and intimate narrative exposes a country of economic inequality that has 'failed its children.'" —Publishers Weekly, starred review"[A] powerful message of class bias ... A potent social and economic message [is] embedded within an affecting memoir." —Kirkus, starred review"“By interweaving memoir, history, and social commentary, this book serves as a countervailing voice to J.D. Vance’s Hillbilly Elegy, which blamed individual choices, rather than sociological circumstances, for any one person ending up in poverty. Smarsh believes the American Dream is a myth, noting that success is more dependent on where you were born and to whom ... 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." —Library Journal“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.” —Barbara Ehrenreich, author of Nickel and Dimed “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.” —George Hodgman, author of Bettyville “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.” —Dale Maharidge, author of Pulitzer Prize-winning And Their Children After Them
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Product details
Hardcover: 304 pages
Publisher: Scribner; 1st Edition edition (September 18, 2018)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1501133098
ISBN-13: 978-1501133091
Product Dimensions:
5.5 x 1.1 x 8.4 inches
Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
Average Customer Review:
4.0 out of 5 stars
129 customer reviews
Amazon Best Sellers Rank:
#3,788 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
Last year I read Sarah Smarsh’s serialized long-form story in No Depression magazine about Dolly Parton. The writing in that piece was so good that I began following the author on Twitter, mostly so I could express my praise and appreciation directly to her and find out when she was publishing more work. That’s where I learned about Heartland and its impending publication. I preordered my copy and waited expectantly for delivery, hoping it would be as good as I wanted it to be.It’s even better than that. This amazing book is one of the most moving and challenging memoirs that I know of. As a reader with a parallel upbringing on the Great Plains and a firsthand exposure to childhood on the margins of economic stability, this book resonated with me in a way that few others have.The author tells the story of her hardscrabble Kansas family by addressing her unborn daughter directly, as if this book were written only for her to know the history of her rural forebears on the prairie in 20th century America. While initially skeptical of this approach, and wondering if it would become a distracting gimmick, I was immensely pleased to discover the beautiful payoff in the final chapter, as the genius of the design became apparent in a fantastic way.The story of Ms. Smarsh and her people reminds me so much of the story of my own family, and I am encouraged and gratified to see the love, compassion, and brilliant insight this phenomenally gifted writer brings to this tale of economic disparity in the world’s richest nation. Everyone needs to read this.
After I finished reading Hillbilly Elegy I was left with a feeling that the author just doesn’t get it. He thought that he made it out of rural poverty and therefore everyone should be able to do it if they just worked a little harder. Sarah Smarsh gets it. She explains poverty in rural Kansas and why it is a trap that is very few people make it out of. The alcohol abuse, moving many times, teen pregnancy are all explored in this memoir in a way that explains why this cycle continues and as she learned in college why it happens and how hard it is to move into the middle class. At an early age she decided she wasn’t going to follow in the footsteps of others in her town. She writes the book to her unborn child that she was determined not to have until she was ready. I learned a lot from this book and highly recommend it.
Sarah Smarsh seeks to dispel misconceptions of the poor, the working class and rural dwellers -- three descriptions that could all apply to the same person -- in her new release: Heartland.Smarsh addresses the narrative to her would-be child, August, explaining to this imagined entity -- and in the process, to the reader -- the life Smarsh lived and how that impacted her decisions later in life.The daughter of a teenage mother and a fourth-generation Kansas wheat farmer, Smarsh details what life was like growing up on a family-owned farm and experiencing life in poverty, even though she and many of her family never thought of themselves that way.Though Smarsh does get into statistics and studies once in a while, the bulk of the narrative focuses on either her personal experiences or the experiences of her family members. And Smarsh's writing style is not one to pull punches or fall into talking points -- she is direct and to the point in illustrating the events that happened and their net effects on the people in question.Heartland serves as an important lesson that there is more to life in a state such as Kansas than a label such as "red state" or "flyover country." It's more complex and detailed than that, and only by understanding the complexities involved can we truly come to understand what causes the poor, the working class and the rural residents to act the way they do -- and perhaps to find real solutions instead of resorting to labels.Highly recommended read.
This book should have been more interesting and moving than it was, given its subject: hardworking and basically honest people who can't seem to get ahead no matter how hard they work. It wasn't. Smarsh's description of her family plods on with monotonous (and repeated) descriptions of their characters, daily lives and predicaments, but never comes close to creating any emotional engagement with them. Smarsh's narrative device--telling the story as if she were talking to a spiritual unborn baby, or her own second soul instead of her readers, it's not clear--was phony and distracting. It doesn't add to the narrative and she sometimes drops it in favor of addressing her audience directly. Smarsh's attempt to ascribe mystical or spiritual powers to her family, as opposed to the dry intellectual power of academic elites, is just silly: women who can tell which apples are crisp simply by holding a hand over them? Seriously?For a deeper and more searing look at poverty in the US I suggest Nickel and Dimed in America (Ehrenreich), Deer Hunting with Jesus (Bageant), or New American Blues (Shorris). They are well written, biting, and engaging books. They make you care about the people they describe as well as about how their situation might be changed. Smarsh's book doesn't. I'm sorry I wasted my time and money.
I'm also a fifth-generation Kansan, except that I'm 67 years old and my ancestors moved here before Kansas was a state.I was disappointed by this book. What was her point? What does our society owe her: she seems to have done very well by its good intentions but where does she think the state/nation should intervened to keep her kin from destroying themselves? I'm a bona fide liberal, but her family seems to have done everything it could to crush her.I'm glad she escaped that (as do many Kansans), but blaming that society at large for her family's failures seems more than a bit cruel to her fellow Kansans. Kansas isn't perfect by a long shot, but please make a reasonable attempt to compare the state to others before condemning it.Sarah; I wanted to love this book, but couldn't. At all.
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