03280cam a2200385 i 4500 623588170 TxAuBib 20190521120000.0 180212s2018||||||||||||||||||||||||eng|u 9781501133091 hardcover 1501133098 hardcover (OCoLC)1022688633 YDX YDX eng eng rda rda YDX rda BDX rda YDX GK8 IEP DAD OCLCO QQ3 JP3 KSW IK2 ILC BUR TJT TxAuBib BDX GK8 IEP DAD OCLCO QQ3 JP3 KSW IK2 ILC BUR TJT TxAuBib rda Smarsh, Sarah, author. Heartland : A memoir of working hard and being broke in the richest country on Earth / By Sarah Smarsh. First Scribner hardcover edition. New York : Scribner, 2018. ix, 290 pages ; 22 cm. txt rdacontent n rdamedia nc rdacarrier Dear August -- A penny in a purse -- The body of a poor girl -- A stretch of gravel with wheat on either side -- The shame a country could assign -- A house that needs shingles -- A working-class woman -- The place I was from. An eye-opening memoir of working-class poverty in the American Midwest. During Sarah Smarsh's turbulent childhood in Kansas in the 1980s and 1990s, the forces of cyclical poverty and the country's changing economic policies solidified her family's place among the working poor. By telling the story of her life and the lives of the people she loves, Smarsh challenges us to look more closely at the class divide in our country and examine the myths about people thought to be less because they earn less. Her personal history affirms the corrosive impact intergenerational poverty can have on individuals, families, and communities, and she explores this idea as lived experience, metaphor, and level of consciousness. 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 as the daughter of a dissatisfied young mother and raised predominantly by her grandmother 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. Combining memoir with powerful analysis and cultural commentary, Heartland is an uncompromising look at class, identity, and the particular perils of having less in a country known for its excess. "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 ) . 20190521. Smarsh, Sarah. Poor Kansas Biography. Working poor Kansas Biography. Farmers Kansas Biography. Farmers Kansas Economic conditions. Farm life Kansas. Kansas Biography. Autobiographies. lcgft Biographies. lcgft TXKPL