Sarah Smarsh was born into a fifth-generation farming family in rural Kansas—and personal acquaintance with working-class poverty. She writes poignantly about her upbringing and the corrosive impact that intergenerational poverty can have on individuals, families, and communities in her new memoir Heartland: A Memoir of Working Hard and Being Broke in the Richest Country on Earth.

Now a journalist whose work has appeared in The New Yorker, The Guardian, and Harper’s Magazine online, Smarsh discusses her book and what her family’s experiences say about class, identity, and the burdens of having less in a country known for its excess.