HEARTLAND by Sarah Smarsh is a text I have been looking forward
to reading, particularly because
several teachers are requesting that we look for a text which could update Ehrenreich’s
Nickel and Dimed. Smarsh subtitles her work “A Memoir of
Working Hard and Being Broke in The Richest Country on Earth” and explores “what it means to be a poor
child in a rich country founded on the promise of equality.” She addresses the concept of ‘white working
class,’ saying “the experience it describes contains both racial privilege and
economic disadvantage, which can exist simultaneously. … Wealthy white people,
in particular, seemed to want to distance themselves from our place and our
truth. … [Yet,] if a person could go to work every day and still not be able to
pay the bills and the reason wasn’t racism, what less articulated problem was
afoot?”
Smarsh’s work is emotional and
heartfelt. She writes eloquently of
different Americas and different understandings, but it did not have the
immediate impact of Vance’s Hillbilly
Elegy, portions of which some classes have successfully incorporated into recent
projects. Others have tried Desmond’s Evicted
or Moore’s The South Side due to their respective Midwest and Chicago connections. I am still looking for something at a slightly lower
reading level and welcome any suggestions.
HEARTLAND, too, deserves
an audience and could possibly work as a Junior Theme text. It is longlisted for the National Book Award for Nonfiction and received starred reviews from both Kirkus
and Publisher’s Weekly.
No comments:
Post a Comment