The Big Read Book Club: "Heartland" (Virtual Session)

Join us for our new Big Read Book Club! Each month, we'll read one of the 12 novels & memoirs the National Endowment for the Arts features as its annual "Big Read" selections. We will meet at 10 am every fourth Saturday to discuss the book; patrons have the option of attending virtually or in person. Coffee and refreshments will be served!

For July, we will be reading the memoir Heartland by Sarah Smarsh. During Sarah Smarsh’s turbulent childhood in Kansas in the 1980s and 1990s, the forces of cyclical poverty and the country’s changing economic policies solidified her family’s place among the working poor. By telling the story of her life and the lives of the people she loves, Smarsh challenges us to look more closely at the class divide in our country and examine the myths about people thought to be less because they earn less. Her personal history affirms the corrosive impact intergenerational poverty can have on individuals, families, and communities, and she explores this idea as lived experience, metaphor, and level of consciousness.

Copies will be available at the library's Circulation Desk. Please sign up below to participate in this month's discussion!