美国国家公共电台 NPR She Thought Her Family Was Middle Class, Not Broke In The Richest Country On Earth

LULU GARCIA-NAVARRO, HOST:

Sarah Smarsh grew up in rural Kansas - the fifth generation to farm the same land, riding tractors where her ancestors rode wagons 1. There was never enough money and prospects 2 were few. She was part of what has become popularized as the white working class. But back then, she didn't know it. In her new book "Heartland: A Memoir 3 of Working Hard And Being Broke In The Richest Country on Earth," Smarsh talks about how her family story reflects the wider tale of inequality and poverty in America. I began by asking her about her life on that farm.

SARAH SMARSH: They're deep roots that I have grown to appreciate. And when it was all that I knew, I didn't really understand at that moment how increasingly rare that sort of experience is - to be farming and living on the very land that generations of my ancestors also worked. So yeah, I feel a very deep connection to this place, not just in a sentimental 4 way but just in terms of raw time.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: Yeah. Let's talk about your people. You're a sociologist 5, so you used the word intergenerational poverty, which has become a bit of a buzzword. But your story and your family's story is so much more than that buzzword might imply.

SMARSH: Yeah. And even the term poverty - since I write about class - I think about the power of words and our word choice often. And I never in a million years thought that I was poor. And I don't think that my family would have used that word either when we were - well, and many are - living that experience. You know, our sense was we've got enough to eat. And there is a roof keeping the elements off of our head. And so I guess if someone would have asked, we would have thought we were, say, middle class.

And I think that working poor is a good term for the experience that my family was living because that kind of gets at the reason that we were poor, which was not for lack of effort and participation 6 in these systems that we're encouraged to believe in. It was rather for markets and low wages that we had no control over ourselves. So much storytelling about poverty is overlaid with this sense of pity and sometimes even condescension 7 that casts it as this overwhelmingly bleak 8 experience. And, in fact, my life and my family was often brimming with humor and joy and love.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: This is a memoir. You make it clear that this is the story of this country but through the prism of your own experience and your family's experience. And I kind of want to bring you back a little bit to that. You know, you're the child of a teenage mother, who was the child of a teenage mother. Can you talk a little bit about that and about how that framed this book? And why you wanted to write it?

SMARSH: For some reason, I don't know if it was just my disposition 9 as a kid. The future journalist in me was always looking around trying to understand all these deep truths about our family that no one was talking about. And I knew my mom was unhappy. And I knew that something about it had to do with her role as a mother. And so by the time I was of childbearing age, even as a prepubescent, I was already consciously thinking about how I really wanted to make sure that I didn't have a baby when I was really young and really poor. That absolutely informed the way that I structured this book - which is addressed to that would-have-been child that I did successfully circumvent 10 having.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: You talk about the bodies of men and women in this book - the bodies of the working poor, essentially 11, and how they are viewed as dispensable.

SMARSH: Toward the beginning of the book, I directly address a term that gets at that within the context of my own racial experience - whiteness, white trash. Trash, of course, is garbage. It is dispensable. It is, by definition, something to be thrown away. And it's a dangerous way to talk about human beings, about ourselves, about our country. I think it says a lot about the way that power and these power structures in this so-called socioeconomic ladder that we measure our country by, really - often informs our language in some really destructive ways.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: Yeah. I mean, you acknowledge in the book that statistically 12, poverty and the sort of accompanying issues disproportionately affect black and brown communities all over the United States. But you write in the book that poor whiteness is a peculiar 13 offense 14 in a society that imbues 15 whiteness with power not just by making it the racial norm but by making it a shorthand for economic stability. Can you explain that idea?

SMARSH: So what I mean by that passage is that if we have a culture really built on the foundations of white supremacy 16 and ideas that are deeply embedded 17 in our society about whiteness essentially being a shorthand for economic stability and power and there is - it's kind kind of implicit 18 in that for the white people who trade in those ideas that that's sort of the right order of things. Even, let's say, well-to-do white people who fancy themselves liberal and progressive have such a hateful, venomous attitude toward members of their own race who have not won in this capitalist society, in economic terms. And that seems to me to suggest that they are offended by essentially looking in the mirror, seeing someone who is more a physical reflection of themselves - in whiteness - who is living the shame of poverty.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: In 2016 - November 8 - America seemed to discover the white working class - or at least the journalists who cover America seemed to discovered the white working class. There's so much that's been written now. When you hear that phrase in the media, what do you think?

SMARSH: On the one hand, you know, coming from rural America, I think oh, all right. Now, like, we're getting some attention in national discussion. But the hell of it is it's often, from my view, the wrong attention, framed the wrong way, asking the wrong questions and making the wrong assessments 19. I'd almost rather just be left alone. So we've sort of moved from a sense of invisibility to a stunning 20 broad stereotype 21 casting. You know, millions of Americans are somehow a political and cultural monolith. It seems to me that what's going on right now is the scapegoating 22 of a group that I know to be, in some pockets, very progressive and is not at all represented by the media attention that's going on right now.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: What does your family think of the book? It's hard for families to read about themselves, I think.

SMARSH: Yeah. They're - the way they look at it, I think, is this is a very strange and rare experience for one to have - to be made a character in a nonfiction book. But they understand work. They're not necessarily book people. But they know I'm doing my job. And they respect that. And though I think the way that they see stories is, if it's true, it's true. So there is neither pride, nor shame on their part. I think they just feel like - they believe I got it right. And that's the best review I could get.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: Sarah Smarsh's book is called "Heartland: A Memoir of Working Hard And Being Broke In The Richest Country on Earth." Thank you very much.

SMARSH: Thank you so much, Lulu.

(SOUNDBITE OF ZOE KEATING'S "ESCAPE ARTIST")