Heartland: A Memoir of Working Hard and Being Broke in the Richest Country on Earth

The narrative of the book is structured as something of a letter to August, which is an unseen presence in Smarsh’s life that “took the form of a baby I either would or would not have” (1). August is both the daughter Smarsh could have had, if she had done as her relative did and gotten pregnant as a teen, and is also a representation of Smarsh herself. August is a poor white child who would have been born into poverty.

By separating August from herself, Smarsh is able to take a more objective view of her life and circumstances. By framing her decisions and point of view through the lens of what she would have wanted for her daughter, she preemptively cuts through the reader’s assumptions that her argument is colored by emotions, resentments, traumas or fears. Although all of these exist in the narrative, Smarsh always considers August and her theoretical experience before drawing conclusions.

August also allows Smarsh to overcome one of the main obstacles that keeps the class divide in place: that “economic inequality is one cultural divide that causes us to see one another as stereotypes” (251). Everyone might imagine what he or she would want for a child. This personalizes the narrative, even for readers with no experience in poverty.

Although August represents the child that could have changed Smarsh’s life by tying her into the cycle of poverty, she also credits this imaginary daughter for saving her. By divorcing her situation from her own in-the-moment feelings and thinking about how she would want to protect her child, she is able to break through the socioeconomic divide. In the process, though, she loses August, which is painful.