Sarah Smarsh
About Sarah Smarsh
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She Grew Up Poor on a Kansas Farm. Her Memoir Is an Attempt to ...
In “Heartland,” Sarah Smarsh offers a cleareyed account of hardscrabble life on the Great Plains — a pattern that in her family goes back generations.
Breaking the Cycle of Poverty: PW Talks with Sarah Smarsh
Smarsh writes about growing up in a family of working-class farmers in Kansas during the 1980s and '90s in 'Heartland' (Scribner, Sept.).
Books by Sarah Smarsh
“Heartland: A Memoir of Working Hard and Being Broke in the Richest Country on Earth” (2018)
Longlisted for the National Book Award for NonfictionAn 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).
“Outlaw Tales of Kansas: True Stories of the Sunflower State's Most Infamous Crooks, Culprits, and Cutthroats” (2016)
From Dodge City to Abilene and beyond, Kansas in its early years was one fine place for outlaws, and one of the most violent places in America’s history. Consider the exploits of Jesse James—a sociopathic killer or a Robin Hood who redistributed Union wealth? Or those of Big Nose Kate, whose true identity was much nobler than her reputation as Doc Holliday’s longtime companion. That’s not to mention the dangerous inmate who became the learned Bird Man of Kansas—a renowned canary expert whose life story became a hit film. All this and more is yours for the reading in Outlaw Tales of Kansas, which introduces fifteen of the most dramatic events, and the most daring and despicable desperados, in the history of the Sunflower State.
“It Happened in Kansas: Remarkable Events That Shaped History (It Happened In Series)” (2010)
It Happened in Kansas features over 25 chapters in Kansas history. Lively and entertaining, this book brings the varied and fascinating history of the Sunflower State to life.
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