In this Time Top 100 Book of the Year, the National Book Award finalist
and New York Times bestselling author of Heartland "analyzes how Dolly
Parton's songs--and success--have embodied feminism for working-class
women" (People). Growing up amid Kansas wheat fields and airplane
factories, Sarah Smarsh witnessed firsthand the particular
vulnerabilities--and strengths--of women in working poverty. Meanwhile,
country songs by female artists played in the background, telling
powerful stories about life, men, hard times, and surviving. In her
family, she writes, "country music was foremost a language among women.
It's how we talked to each other in a place where feelings aren't
discussed." And no one provided that language better than Dolly Parton.
In this "tribute to the woman who continues to demonstrate that feminism
comes in coats of many colors," Smarsh tells readers how Parton's songs
have validated women who go unheard: the poor woman, the pregnant
teenager, the struggling mother disparaged as "trailer trash." Parton's
broader career--from singing on the front porch of her family's cabin in
the Great Smoky Mountains to achieving stardom in Nashville and
Hollywood, from "girl singer" managed by powerful men to self-made mogul
of business and philanthropy--offers a springboard to examining the
intersections of gender, class, and culture. Infused with Smarsh's
trademark insight, intelligence, and humanity, this is "an ambitious
book" (The New Republic) about the icon Dolly Parton and an "in-depth
examination into gender and class and what it means to be a woman and a
working-class hero that feels particularly important right now"
(Refinery29).
