Heartland, A Memoir of Working Hard & Being Broke in the Richest Country on Earth, by Sarah Smarsh. Smarsh, a writing professor and journalist, tells the story of her family’s cycle of poverty that constrained them for generations. She was born into a family of working class farmers in Kansas. Her mother was a teenage mother, and the women in her family were all young mothers hardened and aged early from the work it took to survive day-to-day. Smarsh writes with love and care about these women and the men who married them, but also lays bare their hardships and the shame of being poor. Part memoir, part social analysis, part cultural commentary, Heartland is an uncompromising look at class, identity and the perils of economic hardship in a wealthy nation.
About the book:
Finalist for 2018 National Book Award
Finalist for 2018 Kirkus Prize
Named a Best Book for the Year by NPR, New York Post, BuzzFeed and Publishers Weekly
Presented by: Katie O’Laughlin, Managing Librarian, Reference & Research
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