RaveThe New Republic...an ambitious book that explores what Parton represents for the rural poor women often left out of social justice movements. Drawing on the experience of her own Kansas family, Smarsh uses Parton’s life to show what women’s empowerment can look like in slices of society where \'feminism\' is a dirty word, and how Parton—like many women outside of wealthy, college-educated circles—practices a brand of \'implicit feminism.\' ... Smarsh tells the story of Parton’s early life with a fan’s loving eye—and it’s easy to see why ... The idea that Parton can bridge these gaps starts with her very real talent for talking—and singing—about the place she is from. As Smarsh puts it, country music like Dolly’s showed her that her own rural home, which was \'invisible or ridiculed elsewhere in news and popular culture—deserved to be known, and that it was complicated and good.\' ... Smarsh’s study of Dolly, like her earlier book, Heartland , narrates a cultural schism between America’s urban and rural places.
Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn
PositiveThe New York Times Book ReviewThe authors’ affection for Yamhill is the heartbeat of the book ... Tightrope avoids a problem common among books about places authors have \'escaped.\' Yamhill is not reflected through a rearview mirror, distorted by a removed author’s guilt, resentment or nostalgia. Rather, it is conveyed up close by way of detailed reporting on living people — intimate access achieved because the authors, while outliers with respect to their professional status and home on the opposite coast, are also of the place ... Together, their first-person \'we\' has the refreshing effect of fogging the authorial \'I\' and keeping the spotlight on those they’ve interviewed or memorialized ... These stories are so numerous that we rarely get to know one person deeply. But their number conveys the breadth of financial struggle, the exploration of which took the authors to all 50 states ... reads as lived understanding ... catches what many analyses miss about struggling communities across color lines: an undercurrent of self-hatred, in which people blame themselves for bad outcomes and are loath to ask for a \'handout\' ... \'Tightrope\'’s greatest strength is its exaltation of the common person’s voice, bearing expert witness to troubles that selfish power has wrought.
