1. Heartland Book Sarah Smarsh
2. Heartland Sarah Smarsh Audiobook
3. Heartland By Sarah Smarsh Summary
4. Heartland Sarah Smarsh Pdf

1. Heartland Prologue-Chapter 1 Summary & Analysis Prologue Summary: “Dear August” Author Sarah Smarsh’s Prologue functions as a letter to August, who is the voice in her head and imaginary friend she talks to throughout her life.
2. Heartland: A Memoir of Working Hard and Being Broke in the Richest Country on Earth Sarah Smarsh, 2018 Scribner 304 pp. ISBN-13: 091 Summary Longlisted, 2018 National Book Award-Nonfiction 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.

Heartland: A Memoir of Working Hard and Being Broke in the Richest Country on Earth is a 2018 non-fiction book by American journalist Sarah Smarsh. The book contains events from her life and the lives of her relatives, and it focuses on cycles of poverty and social class in the U.S. State of Kansas.

Heartland by Sarah Smarsh is a personal memoir about growing up in rural Kansas. As a successful writer for several national papers, Smarsh looks back upon how much she has overcome to arrive at her career. She grew up on a farm, raised mostly by her grandma because her mom had gotten pregnant when she was barely a teenager. Smarsh recalls the ups and downs of her childhood, focusing on the unique problems which poverty presents. In her maturity, she sees how easily people who have never encountered poverty could be tempted to dismiss it as someone else's problem or to view welfare as an unnecessary expense, but Smarsh's purpose in writing this book is to provide insight into the real effects of poverty and its systemic nature.

First, Smarsh observes how poverty is a generational problem; it's cyclical and consequently very difficult to escape. For example, she was born to a teen mom who was also born to a teen mom. Since Smarsh's grandma was constantly remarrying and moving and seeking a stable home, she was unable to provide her daughter with the advantages which wealthier kids experience. Smarsh and her mom both grew up facing the constant threat of homelessness and death. More importantly, they were not the only family struggling. They lived in a community of similarly disenfranchised people who grew tough and reserved through their constant struggles. Smarsh, herself, only is able to leave this cycle because she stayed focused on achievement and narrowly escaped teen pregnancy.

Smarsh observes how life in the big city had almost lulled her into complacency, causing her to forget her childhood. She's disassociated some from those experiences, but she also expresses a constant hurt and empathy for her family's continued financial struggles. Although she has left, she still feels like a part of that community, but she must fight to preserve this heritage. In her daily life, Smarsh feels no connection to poverty or rural life, so she can identify how her peers in the city remain largely unconscious of the real gravity and consequence of poverty. They casually complain about the expense of government welfare, but they have never benefitted from the essential service themselves. In writing this book, Smarsh attempts to reconcile this observed disparity by explaining how she bridged the gap between poverty and success in her own life.

The author uses this autobiography as an opportunity to discuss some personal issues about coming to peace with her background, and her family.

Heartland Book Sarah Smarsh

Heartland Sarah Smarsh Audiobook

She begins by explaining that although she was raised in extreme poverty in Kansas, she herself was able to achieve economic growth by avoiding having a baby. However, she does speak to her unborn baby, implying that she might have been pregnant at one time. She talks to the imaginary baby often in the autobiography.

Then she points out that in addition to not becoming a teenage parent like her mom and her mom before her, there is another serious reason that her family stayed so poor for so long; they constantly moved around. Her grandmother wasn't finished marrying until her seventh husband, and her mom moved almost 50 times before even starting high school. She remembers their home, a farmhouse on 160 acres of wheat.

Some of Smarsh's family handled poverty in stride, like her father, who never let a fun opportunity pass by. She remembers that he did always have a red Solo cup with liquor during those fun activities. Others in her family just stayed reserved, making the best of their bad situation in other ways.

Heartland By Sarah Smarsh Summary

Life in poverty is dangerous, Smarsh explains. She starts to tell stories about harm that befell her community, people dying in industrial farm equipment, her father's poisoning from his short employment transporting chemicals, and the worst part is that private health insurance wasn't an option for them. Smarsh says that white people with money tended to look down at them.

Heartland Sarah Smarsh Pdf

She ends her account with a defense of the welfare system, explaining that although more wealthy people can't imagine things correctly, the truth is that serious poverty is an extremely difficult problem to surmount, and she is thankful for the support of the government for those in her family who needed it.