A review by katieproctorbooks
Heartland: A Memoir of Working Hard and Being Broke in the Richest Country on Earth by Sarah Smarsh

4.0

A really informative and well-written memoir. At first I was a little put off/confused that this seemed to be a letter to the author’s imaginative would-be child, had she gotten pregnant at 16 like the rest of the women in her family, but by the end I mostly got why she did it. I think this group of people she belongs to, Midwestern farmers, rural people living in poverty, is one that goes largely unnoticed and I appreciate her story for the fact that it taught me about her specific experience and how politics and policy affected her life.