Sublime

2018 book Heartland was published, I heard from thousands of readers who were relieved and delighted to recognize in its pages their unsexy place, or a place much like it. The book is an intersectional critique of our ill-addressed socioeconomic class structure, my family’s rural poverty serving as a springboard to analyzing US history, policy and... See more

Parenthood likewise forces an encounter with the illogic of the market: good fortune means getting to pay someone less than you make to do a job that’s harder and probably more important than your own. 

Girlhood is big business. The ones who are best at it literally treat it as an occupation, modeling or taking suitably candid-looking pictures of themselves, recommending clothes and jewelry and books, going viral on TikTok. They’re performing a way of being that looks joyful, effortless, and adorable. It’s a performance that by definition has a... See more

Forgoing the caricature of rurality as frighteningly remote and disconnected, Somebody Somewhere also nails the liminality of town and country, for many.

At a moment when our social fabric is tearing, we would do well to look at the true threads of every unseen and misunderstood place. Efforts to diversify the powerful spaces that tell stories and create culture – newsrooms, publishers, Hollywood writers’ rooms – must address place, geography and class as identity markers.