Olivia: Most of us think of hard work as a virtue, a path to success. But what if the hardest work, the kind that breaks your body, is the very thing that makes society see you as worthless? Jackson: That’s a sharp turn. You mean the more you physically labor, the less you’re valued? It feels completely backward. What if your calloused hands are a mark of shame, not pride? Olivia: That's the brutal paradox at the heart of Sarah Smarsh's incredible memoir, Heartland: A Memoir of Working Hard and Being Broke in the Richest Country on Earth. Jackson: Wow, what a title. It lays it all out there. Olivia: It really does. And Smarsh lives it. She's a fifth-generation Kansas wheat farmer's daughter who broke a long family cycle of teen pregnancy and poverty to become an accomplished journalist. The book was a finalist for the National Book Award, and it’s written as a letter to an imagined daughter, August, which gives it this incredibly intimate, powerful voice. Jackson: A letter to an unborn daughter… that’s a fascinating way to frame a story about class in America. So when you talk about the body being devalued, that's a heavy place to start. What does she mean by that?

Olivia: She means that for the working poor in her world, the body isn't just a vessel for your spirit; it's a tool. It's born into hard labor. And that labor is often dangerous, not by accident, but by design. The most powerful story she tells is about her father. Jackson: Okay, I’m listening. Olivia: In the late 80s, after the family construction business went under, her dad had to take whatever work he could find. He ends up at a company that cleans industrial equipment, driving a van filled with barrels of spent, toxic chemicals. The fumes were overwhelming. He wasn't given proper safety gear—no respirator, nothing. Jackson: Oh, I can see where this is going, and it’s not good. Olivia: Not at all. One day, he comes home, stumbles inside, and just collapses. His body was shutting down from chemical poisoning. He was rushed to the hospital, and his condition was so critical that a priest was called in to give him the last rites. Jackson: Last rites? Over a cleaning job? That’s horrifying. Olivia: He was only 32. He survived, but just barely. It took him years to "get his body, mind, and soul cleaned out," as he put it. And Smarsh makes a devastating point about this. She quotes, "The worse danger is not the job itself but the devaluing of those who do it. A society that considers your body dispensable will inflict a violence upon you." Jackson: That quote hits hard. So this isn't just an unlucky accident or a shady employer. She’s arguing this is a feature of the system? That some bodies are just considered more disposable than others? Olivia: Exactly. It's a systemic risk. Poverty forces you into these dangerous jobs, and the lack of a safety net means there's no recourse. It’s a pattern that repeats through generations. She tells another story about her grandmother, Betty, as a toddler. An electric company worker left a live wire in their yard. Betty touched it and was electrocuted. Jackson: You’re kidding me. Olivia: Her mother had to physically knock her off the wire to save her. When the company man came back, he insisted the wire wasn't live, until Betty's mother dared him to touch it himself. He did, and he got shocked. The family was too poor and scared to sue. It’s this constant, grinding exposure to danger, where your physical well-being is simply not a priority to the wider world. Your body is just part of the machinery of someone else's profit. Jackson: So it’s a physical ledger of your class. The scars, the chronic pain, the exposure to toxins—it's all written on the body. Olivia: Precisely. And that physical toll is just one part of the story. The psychological burden is just as heavy.

Jackson: How so? Where does that come in? Olivia: Well, this physical danger is compounded by a psychological one, an invisible cage Smarsh identifies as shame. In America, we have this powerful myth of meritocracy. Jackson: Right, the classic 'pull yourself up by your bootstraps' narrative. If you work hard, you'll succeed. Olivia: And the flip side of that coin is poisonous. If you're poor, the narrative implies it must be your fault. It’s a personal, moral failing. Smarsh argues that this shame is one of the most effective tools used to keep the poor in their place. Jackson: It paralyzes you. If you believe you're the problem, you're not going to fight the system. Olivia: You're going to fight yourself. She gives this heartbreaking example of her Grandma Betty. As a young, single mother fleeing an abusive husband in the 60s, she had absolutely no money. As a last resort, she went on welfare. It was only for a few weeks, just enough to get on her feet and find a job. But for the rest of her life, she spoke of it with this deep, profound shame. Jackson: Even though it was the very thing that helped her survive and protect her child. Olivia: Yes. Because society had taught her that needing help was a disgrace. Smarsh writes, "Society’s contempt for the poor becomes the poor person’s contempt for herself." No one, she says, loathed the idea of "handouts" more than the people who desperately needed them. Jackson: That’s such a powerful, twisted logic. It’s like the whole country is playing a rigged game of Monopoly, and then shaming the people who keep landing on Boardwalk with a hotel. Olivia: That’s a perfect analogy. Smarsh calls the American Dream a "trick coin." And the shame is everywhere, even in the smallest details. She remembers after her parents' divorce, her dad would pick her and her brother up in his old, beat-up Oldsmobile. It was dented, rusted, a rolling symbol of their new, poorer status. Her little brother would duck down in the back seat so his friends wouldn't see him. Jackson: Oh, man. As a kid, that feeling is just mortifying. You feel like your family's circumstances are a reflection on you. Olivia: Exactly. And Smarsh, even as a young girl, understood this. She felt the shame, but she also felt the injustice of it. She knew her family were some of the hardest-working people on earth. She writes, "What really put the shame on us wasn’t our moral deficit. It was our money deficit." Jackson: That line draws a clean, brutal distinction. It reframes the entire conversation. This all sounds so bleak, though. The physical danger, the psychological shame. Is there any way out? How did Smarsh herself escape this cycle?

Olivia: That’s the most powerful part of the book. It’s not a story of despair. It’s a story of incredible resilience. And Smarsh has this beautiful concept she returns to, a phrase she learned later in life: "What you don’t transmute, you will transmit." Jackson: Wait, 'transmute, not transmit.' That sounds a bit abstract. What does that actually look like in their day-to-day lives? Olivia: It means consciously processing the pain, the anger, the hardship, and transforming it into something else—wisdom, empathy, strength—so that you don't pass the raw trauma down to the next generation. And for me, the perfect symbol of this in the book is a story about her Grandpa Arnie. Jackson: The one who didn't complain about what his wife cooked. Olivia: That's him. One winter, after a huge blizzard, the landscape was flat and covered in snow. No hills for sledding. The family was bored. So Grandpa Arnie, this resourceful farmer, gets an idea. He drags an old aluminum canoe out of a shed, ties it to the back of his three-wheeler, and tells everyone to pile in. Jackson: A canoe? In the snow? Olivia: Yes! The whole family climbs in with blankets and drinks, and he pulls them, laughing and sliding, all across the snowy wheat fields. It was a moment of pure, unadulterated joy, created from absolutely nothing but ingenuity and a desire for connection. Jackson: That's incredible. It's not about escaping poverty, but about refusing to let poverty define your humanity. It’s an act of defiance. Olivia: It's a perfect act of transmutation. It’s taking a situation of lack—no hills, no sleds—and turning it into abundance. And Smarsh does this herself, but with her mind. She was put in the gifted program at school. She discovered she had a voice. She entered a public speaking contest in fifth grade, writing a speech about the dangers of drugs—a topic she knew intimately from her family's struggles. Jackson: And she won, I'm guessing. Olivia: She won first place. And in that moment, seeing her whole, complicated, flawed family cheering for her, she realized that their struggles didn't negate their love. She could hold both truths at once. She used her intellect and her voice to build a different life. Jackson: So, writing the book to her unborn daughter, August, is her ultimate act of transmutation. It’s her way of processing it all—the pain, the love, the injustice—so she doesn't pass down the unvarnished trauma. She’s giving her daughter the story, but also the wisdom gained from it. Olivia: Exactly. She is ensuring that the cycle of silence and shame ends with her. She is giving August a language for an experience that, for generations, her family had to endure without words.

Jackson: When you put it all together like that, it’s such a powerful framework. The body as the physical ledger, shame as the psychological cage, and transmutation as the act of rebellion. Olivia: It really is. Heartland is so much more than a memoir about being broke. It’s a profound look at the human cost of a system that devalues its hardest workers. It challenges us to look past the political clichés about the "working class" and see the actual human beings—their pain, their dignity, and their fierce, creative resilience. Jackson: It’s a story about the invisible things—the weight of shame, the strength of a family bond, the quiet decision to create a different future. It’s not just about economics; it’s about what it means to stay human under immense pressure. Olivia: And Smarsh’s voice is just so clear and compassionate. She never pities her family; she honors them. She shows their flaws and their strengths with equal measure, and in doing so, she gives them the dignity that society so often denies them. Jackson: It really makes you think. When we see poverty, are we seeing a lack of effort, or are we seeing the scars of a battle most of us have never had to fight? Olivia: That’s the question she leaves us with. And it’s one we desperately need to be asking. This is Aibrary, signing off.