Heartland Sarah Smarsh by Sarah Smarsh 9781501133114, 150113311X instant download after payment.

"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."  -  Elizabeth Catte, The Washington Post

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.  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 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...Smarsh shows how the false promise of the ‘American dream’ was used to subjugate the poor. It’s a powerful mantra.”  -  The New York Times Book Review.

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.