Bone of the Bone

Starred review from July 1, 2024
The author of Heartland returns with a collection of pieces that illuminate the plights and humanity of her working-class subjects. "The White, rural, working-poor people about whom I most often write--they are your people too," writes Smarsh in the introduction to this compendium of 36 essays, the majority of which originally appeared in a range of publications. The author possesses a distinct style, one simultaneously personal and political, with the aim of navigating "the space where storytelling might be at once factual in content and artistic in form." In her essays, which range from two to 18 pages, she makes frequent references to her own experiences. "I am bone of the bone of them that live in trailer parks," she writes in a 2014 essay about "the teeth of poor folk," which criticizes America's costly dental care system and humanizes those who are unable to afford treatment. She calls for the American dream "to put its money where its mouth is" with different laws and "individual awareness of the judgments we pass on people." Another essay describes Smarsh's brother, a first-generation college graduate who "had no connections in the professional world, and no one to tell him that communications and history degrees were bad bets to begin with." As she recounts, he regularly sold his plasma over the course of a decade to make ends meet. In a piece about growing wheat in Kansas, the author writes, "The greater divide in America today is not between red and blue but between what is discussed in powerful rooms and what is understood in the field." Even though these essays were shaped by more than a dozen editors, this collection's impact is staggering, and Smarsh's voice is constant, studied, and compassionate. This powerful reckoning with the costs of being poor should be required short-form nonfiction reading.

COPYRIGHT(2024) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

August 1, 2024
Journalist-author Smarsh (Heartland, 2018) gathers 36 essays--all but one previously published--written over the past ten years. "I am bone of the bone of them that live in trailer homes," she writes, and as in Heartland, she focuses here on "the multi-pronged classism of the United States," and "our broad, unexamined prejudice against those long known, tellingly, as 'white trash.'" Her most compelling essays combine affecting stories from her life with political arguments. In one piece, details about the life of a brother who frequently sells blood plasma to pay his bills bump up against statistics about the money generated by the drug companies that use that plasma. Smarsh defines herself as a populist and a progressive and defends both positions frequently in her essays. In a longer story, she contemplates how she considered running for the Senate from her home state of Kansas but decided against it. The wrenching, final, previously unpublished essay describes the author's fraught relationship with her mother from childhood through her mother's death.

COPYRIGHT(2024) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

October 18, 2024

In an early essay in her latest collection, Smarsh (Heartland: A Memoir of Working Hard and Being Broke in the Richest Country on Earth) examines the unaffordability of dental treatments in the United States. She feels that, given the social scorn that comes with neglecting one's teeth, this conundrum is emblematic of general American contempt for the poor. Although well-educated and professionally successful, Smarsh finds it difficult to slake off the long-term effects of living in survival mode for years. She fleshes out James Baldwin's oft-quoted adage that it is "extremely expensive to be poor." Her examples include harsh overdraft fees, the accrual of credit card debt to pay for necessities on a minimum wage income, and college graduates entering the marketplace saddled with student loans. She reminds readers that American poverty is everywhere. While she sometimes risks repetition, as when she lists her bona fides with each new essay, her insights are a welcome antidote to the broad strokes painted by the media. VERDICT These essays from National Book Award finalist Smarsh are recommended for all collections.--Barrie Olmstead

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