This is the real "Hillbilly Elegy."
If you want to understand the rural MAGA mentality, this is the place.
What we've got here is Clinton, Arkansas. Not Fayetteville, the hip Arkansas, not Little Rock, the urban Arkansas, but nowhere Arkansas, where people have no money, drop out of school when they're pregnant and the cycle of poverty continues and everybody believes it's God's will and you will be saved by the Almighty.
It's your responsibility. Even though you were born without advantages, and your hometown continues to go down the drain as the tax base craters and you entertain yourself with drugs and alcohol while you live a shortened life.
Deaths of despair. You'll read about them in the elite press, now you'll fully understand them.
Yes, the elite, the enemy. You hear politicians talk about the real America, American values, a return to when America was great? This is what they're talking about. It's not great at all, these people are being duped. Then again, they've got one advantage over almost half the country, they're white, and that makes them superior, no matter what you think.
Now by this point those on the right side of the bench have already tuned out. But this book isn't for them. Because either they don't read books or they're taking advantage of those being written about. Yes, lower taxes, all that hogwash, is benefiting them as it continues to hurt the base. Voting against your interests? This is the place!
So what we've got here is Monica Potts, yes, that's her real name, and her best friend Darci. They're smart, funny, the leaders of their class. But Monica goes one way, and Darci the other. Monica's mom wants her to get out, and Darci's mom? She exercises no control over Darci, she's serving her husband, not that Darci would listen. Then there's the mother who lets her daughter get married at fifteen to get her out of town, believing she is saving her. Monica stays on the straight and narrow, but as Darci hits high school, she goes boy crazy (the book's term, don't think I'm holier-than-thou, judging here), and starts to party with ever older boys (men), and school becomes secondary...
If you grew up where I did, in the suburbs in the fifties and sixties, you'll marvel how different this is. I was born knowing I was going to college. My parents tolerated little. I had to do well in school. It wasn't that it was strict, there was plenty of fun, but the goals were clear, life was laid out in front of me, become a professional, or else...
Living in California I've told all my friends that their kids should apply to the elite schools, assuming they're qualified, because if they get in, the school will foot the bill. They didn't believe me. They saw those price tags and blanched. Better to go to the state school. Almost no one is leaving Arkansas to go to school. And then there are people who never leave Arkansas whatsoever, I mean why?
But Monica falls into the east coast system by accident. Spends a summer in NYC at Barnard. And ends up going to Bryn Mawr, only because her mother had heard of it, she hadn't and had never been there until she stepped foot on campus. But it changed her life. Because once you're on the leafy grounds you're coddled, the administration cares about you, there are all these services, mental health and more. As for therapy, it's a sign of weakness, don't you know?
And the city... Everybody says not to go, it's a hellhole. This is what they've been told, growing up and from Fox News. You can't stay alive in the city, you'll be robbed and killed, better to stay home where you are safe, where you die from drugs and alcohol and other misadventures.
This is not a hard book to read. And people are reading it. But I wish more would. I learned more about the rural, MAGA mentality in the few hours it took to read "The Forgotten Girls" than I ever have reading "The New York Times," "The New Yorker" or watching Fox News. This is a report from the heartland, someone who actually lived there, who grew up there. This is not a reporter taking notes with an agenda.
Monica got out, went to Bryn Mawr and Columbia Journalism School. But she moved back to Clinton. Now works remotely for 538. She's back there, she reported this story.
And it's not histrionic, not over the top dramatic, but ultimately you'll learn more from "The Forgotten Girls" than "Educated."
"Educated" is a horror movie. "The Forgotten Girls" is a train-wreck. "Educated" blows your mind, whereas "The Forgotten Girls" sinks in gradually and then stays with you, because these people aren't rawly batsh*t crazy, but they're not like you or me, unless you live in these circumstances.
Now the book is peppered with studies, facts, it's not pure narrative. Which lends authority, but makes the book just a bit more difficult to read. But don't let that turn you off. If you want to know what is going on with all those blind Trump-lovers, the people who support the elected officials and their nonsense in the House of Representatives, whose positions seem looney-tunes and can't be changed, you need to read "The Forgotten Girls." Not as a sentence, this is not schoolwork, this is not an assignment... It's just fascinating. See how the other half lives.
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