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A review by debussy
The Forgotten Girls: A Memoir of Friendship and Lost Promise in Rural America by Monica Potts
challenging
emotional
informative
reflective
sad
medium-paced
4.0
I am a white woman not far off from the author’s age and grew up in the Arkansas Ozarks. So much of this book felt like reading about my own life—the relentless isolation, conservatism, and xenophobia of the area as well as the driving need to leave it while developing a strange, complicated relationship with it afterward are so on point. The way the area is a deeply messed up patriarchy steeped with religion makes women scapegoats—there to be blamed or used by the men who have little in their lives except the ability to control others. This is a sad, compelling, and unfortunately accurate portrait of a place I still love.
Graphic: Addiction, Alcoholism, Car accident, Toxic friendship, and Classism
Moderate: Child death, Drug abuse, Drug use, Mental illness, Misogyny, Xenophobia, Death of parent, and Pandemic/Epidemic
Minor: Miscarriage and Physical abuse