Book Summary and Reviews of Paper Girl by Beth Macy

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labmom55

I don’t agree with all of her premises
3.5 stars, rounded down

Paper Girl was published last year but it already feels somewhat out of date. Beth Macy has written a combination memoir/socio-economic study about life in small town/rural America. It covers her own youth in rural Ohio. Her family was poor but she had the opportunities provided by a Pell grant that covered her entire college costs. She also grew up in a town that valued its schools and its public library. She contrasts the Urbana of her youth with the current day town, now plagued by high unemployment, drug and mental health crises, and falling high school graduation rates. She also touches on the lack of meaningful federal programs to help. Pell grants now don’t come close to funding tuition, let alone all the other expenses of attending college.

The reason I feel it seemed out of date was her strong belief in the power of a college education. In the past few months, I’ve read more and more newspaper articles concerning the falling value of a four year college degree when weighed against the rise of AI, a declining job market and serious student loan debt. She talks somewhat of trade schools and AA programs to achieve practical jobs, but seems to view them as less than ideal. I, on the other hand, think we should be funding these programs much more than we do.

Her theses ring truer on other issues. That those that go away to college don’t come back, leaving fewer folks that believe in the value of an education. And how both political parties failed to recognize the hurt NAFTA would have on the US middle class.
As a reporter, she also focuses on how people get their news. Of course, it’s a chicken and egg thing. Which came first? The slanted news forums or the desire to only hear the news you want to believe. Do the encapsulated news programs allow for the rise of racial prejudice, homophobia and anti-transgender or just give an acceptance to beliefs already there?

As far as the writing, I found the book to be somewhat disjointed. It constantly switched between her history, her current relationships with family members, discussions on how to fix the educational problems in Urbana and similar towns, examples of young people who had “succeeded” and research into the economic problems facing the country, especially its small towns and rural areas. And then throw in a heavy dose of political rationales. It lacked good flow. I appreciated it the most when she and others actually talked about possible solutions, especially those that have worked on a small scale basis. She rightly focuses on the failure of the Democratic Party to recognize the despair of the rural population being ignored. As James Carville said, “it’s the economy, stupid”.

This was my pick for our book club. While I felt the book was lacking in several areas, I believe it will make for a fascinating discussion.

Connie Kub

TDS on steroids
This book interested me because I grew up in Ohio and spent most of my life here. The author and I had some similar experiences growing up, and I even was a journalist for a while before I went back to teaching.

Although I was and am a classical liberal, I have many conservative views also. As I read the first few pages, I saw that the author had a very different view from mine. I kept reading thinking well, I might begin to understand her point of view.

But then, I read the last paragraph of the book and saw that after her whole story she blames Donald Trump and the billionaires that support him. Huh? Really? All I could think of was Beth Macy has TDS on steroids.

Other books by Beth Macy at BookBrowse