Audiobook Review: Heartland: A Memoir of Working Hard and Being Broke in the Richest Country on Earth by Sarah Smarsh
Heartland: A Memoir of Working Hard and Being Broke in the Richest Country on Earth by Sarah Smarsh
Publisher: Scribner
Release Date: September 18, 2018
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Publisher’s Description:
Sarah Smarsh was born a fifth generation Kansas wheat farmer on her paternal side, and the product of generations of teen mothers on her maternal side. Through her experiences growing up on a farm thirty miles west of Wichita, we are given a unique and essential look into the lives of poor and working class Americans living in the heartland.
During Sarah’s turbulent childhood in Kansas in the 1980s and 1990s, she enjoyed the freedom of a country childhood, but observed the painful challenges of the poverty around her; untreated medical conditions for lack of insurance or consistent care, unsafe job conditions, abusive relationships, and limited resources and information that would provide for the upward mobility that is the American Dream. By telling the story of her life and the lives of the people she loves with clarity and precision but without judgement, Smarsh challenges us to look more closely at the class divide in our country.
A beautifully written memoir that combines personal narrative with powerful analysis and cultural commentary, Heartland examines the myths about people thought to be less because they earn less.
Heartland is Sarah Smarsh’s memoir of growing up in rural Kansas. Smarsh addresses her memoir to her unborn child. A child she was never pregnant with because she saw what her mother and other women in her family went through as teenage mothers and vowed that would never be her. Which is great but as a literary device it was a little weird and awkward. Thankfully, she doesn’t speak to her imaginary child too terribly often.
Heartland drives home that the “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” philosophy is hogwash. Sometimes the deck is just too stacked and the cycle of poverty nearly impossible to break. Smarsh herself managed to get out but after reading about her family, one understands why they did not. Comparisons have been made to Hillbilly Elegy and they are definitely similar. However, if you can only read one, choose Heartland. Smarsh is a better writer (sorry JD!) and she has more insight into the class divide and her family’s circumstances.
I listed to the audiobook of Heartland, which Smarsh reads herself. She has a pleasant voice with just a hint of a Southern accent that made this book an enjoyable listen. Recommended.
