[Hac-announce] September 2024 HAC Book Discussion: "Heartland" by Sarah Smarsh

[kvngough at aol.com]

 Our book for September is Heartland: A Memoir of Working Hard and Being Broke in the Richest Country on Earth by journalist and academic Sarah Smarsh. The discussion will take place on Saturday, September 12 at 2:30 pm at the Wilson Branch of the New Haven Free Public Library, located at 303 Washington Ave., New Haven. Please note that we are meeting on the 2nd rather than 3rd Saturday of the month. (We will return to 'normal' timing after this month.)


>From Amazon:In this furious, regretful, and loving memoir, Sarah Smarsh examines the life of America’s rural poor through the microcosm of her extended family. Growing up working-class white on the Kansas plains, Smarsh enjoyed the freedom of a country childhood, but witnessed the hideous legacy of poverty in her relatives’ untreated illnesses, unsafe job conditions, abusive marriages, and addictions to everything from cigarettes to opioids.
For Smarsh, one of the cruelest blows the poor suffer is society’s assessment that they somehow deserve less than others. “People of all backgrounds experience a sense of poorness – not enough of this or that thing that money can’t buy. But financial poverty is the one shamed by society, culture, unchecked capitalism, public policy, our very way of speaking.” Heartland will make you check your privilege before you refer to anyone as “white trash” or “red neck.”
"Smart, nuanced and atmospheric...Heartland deepens our understanding of the crushing ways in which class shapes possibility in this country. It's an unsentimental tribute to the working-class people Smarsh knows – the farmers, office clerks, trash collectors, waitresses – whose labor is often invisible or disdained." – NPR Books
Hope to see you on the 12th,
Kevin & Paula
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