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 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. Smarsh's 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.
Sarah Smarsh has covered socioeconomic class, politics, and public policy for \_The Guardian, VQR, The New Yorker, Harpers\_, and many others. She has also received a Joan Shorenstein Fellow at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government. A former professor of nonfiction writing, Smarsh frequently speaks on economic inequality and related media narratives. She lives in Kansas. Heartland is her first book.
Sarah Smarsh has covered socioeconomic class, politics, and public policy for \_The Guardian, VQR, The New Yorker, Harpers\_, and many others. She has also received a Joan Shorenstein Fellow at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government. A former professor of nonfiction writing, Smarsh frequently speaks on economic inequality and related media narratives. She lives in Kansas. Heartland is her first book.