lawrence specifically i'm from south central kansas as i said. i was pondering this on my way here. i bet some of you might feel this way too. i can if you like that we have some particular things in

common. that is the theme in this book. they're calling it a memoir. but it's really a story about my family. some of it was just piecing together the story of my family. they were aware into the legacies in which they were born. i feel like it's a place that embraces and is always aware of your history. it so crucial not just to kansas but to the whole country.

lawrence is a place like me i think that defines the defined the political and cultural expectations of the so-called red state. while heartland is not a political book or an argument of any sort it is a challenge to readers who might serotype the people. to consider in fact the nuance. as i recall you like beer a lot. her lent is about class also

place and my friend. -- where i'm from. the rare urban divide most people raise their hands. when i did things like attend an ivy league school. a rare and particular place.

i'm going to read a little bit about that. i wanted to say that i have this new advantage in the past week. so few people write about class and look at these issues specifically in particular with the ownership in the particular place i come from. i don't think it's necessarily even about me or my work. i do work hard. i hope there's something good about it. they have a platform in national discussion. i hear from a lot of people. but this past week has been

incredible and so humbling. always validating of what i expected. is a real fallacy. and the different skin colors and background. our stories are different and yet they're the same. and i think i might have something to do with that. i'm going to read it. a memoir of working hard.

so that unison we have a little bit of a problem in the stories that we tell ourselves. for centuries about this place. and really ultimately this is a meritocracy. i think that is what is really speaking to people and focusing about that. the rope piece is a special niche within that. i wanted to point that out. the categorizing and that we do. and there is real value in something essential.

that is an essential conversation. along the way we should make sure that were talking about what we all have in common also. i'm not talking about seeking empathy or passion that wishes harm upon that. those folks are really way fewer. from watching cable news. if you just leave your living room it turns out it's not

just like a bunch of hateful bad guys out there. i happen to be a member of the industry. it dries up ratings. it is essential to address it. and we are in a crisis situation as a country. i think we are perverting providing our understanding of ourselves. if along the way were not talking about how we are mostly all in this together. and decent people who might disagree on how to get to the same out comes. the first passage is from 1987. i was six years old. i was living in the house that

my construction worker father and fourth generation wheat farmer father built with his own hands. west of wichita. i hung out with my maternal grandma a lot. she was 34 when she became a grandma to me. to hear him hanging out with grandma betty. i can't remember for sure of this comes up in this package. if i say view this has everything to be with betty. fifth generation farm kid. i my mom's side of the family

a lot of a the single mothers and polyp pretty. with most flea female children. working in diners and having a very transient experience in escaping abuses in my grandma met a farmer and that's how my mom met my dad was a farm boy out in the area. can you like these two very different groups convened. i am the inheritor of the legacy of teen pregnancies. as far back as i can find in any records that were kept we're talking about times of corsets. i am the first woman in female and my a direct maternal lines. who did not have a baby before age 20.

i'm speaking to the would be a child or baby that i might've had as a teenager. i have a very keen awareness of at a very young age younger than any young woman or child should have to be. kind of an entity. by the early 19 87. grandma betty had tired of the long drive between the courthouse in wichita.

after a young life young life of working on factory floors and just a very few opportunities that were available to women and that workforce. by the time i came along she had benefited from a federal grant. it allowed her to attend what they called business school. the fact the fact she have

tired of the long commute they have. she didn't want to quit her job. when had she not worked she was proud of what she did at the courthouse i get used to the big money. she received a meager salary and accepted without negotiations. she paid no rent or mortgage. or to bail out a friend. who needed help the way betty herself had needed it. a moment ago. she was tired of the long daily commute from the farm.

it could be a long-term property investment anyhow. and even at the many years on the farm. wichita was still her home. i went along as she visited open houses i like the brown brick house with a glass coffee table. back home i told mom we went to a house of the cost $60,000 that's not much she said. some houses even cause a hundred thousand dollars. i spent the next week reporting this to anyone who would listen. grandma found a tiny square house on second street near downtown wichita near both her childhood home and the mexican-american a neighborhood where her

lifelong best friend had grown up. the new place was just a five-minute drive from her job at the courthouse. she would stay at the house during the week and spend weekends at the farm with grandpa he agreed to drive to wichita on weeknights after his chores. grandma bought the house for $25,000. a good trick in which they make them monthly payments for the first couple years until the binds --dash buyers payments kick in it's like being carried by jesus on a sandy beach and paint him interested for every footprint the yellow orange brick house was built around the time that he was born in 1945 and have a concrete porch and four rooms. the small bedroom and living room with wood floors.

to turn them unfinished basement into more space. matt and i picked up the chalky pieces to put in the garbage bag. we jumped on a mattress covered with powderly -- powdery plaster. second street was busy with cars and i cap met at a safe distance. i held his hand as we watered a fluke -- a few blocks. it was one of the last family groceries in town and grandma had lost their as a kid herself. george was a thousand years old. and gave us candy out of a jar. after supper at the new house matt went back to the country with our parents.

so he would be there for early morning chores. i'd stayed in wichita with grandma betty to help her clean her new house. this is a place for you clean your own house. we scrubbed the kitchen floor. they couldn't believe how filthy someone left the place. we scraped at the wallpaper and grandma couldn't believe how many layers of wallpaper someone left on the walls. to smear a cross. we have a tiny black and white television going. and when the 10:00 news came on grandma was ready to hay it up. we were hungry but the new house was empty. for supper, we had eaten bologna sandwiches and potato shoestrings from a greasy metal can.

grandma drove us to mcdonald's and told us to get whatever we wanted. she often told me to get whatever i wanted when i went to fast food restaurants in i understood that her generosity was because of the hard life she have lived. i ordered a hot fudge sundae. back at the new house we dragged a message it that's -- she moved the television to the corner next to us. she fiddled with the tall antenna. it felt like a great adventure to eat ice cream on a bare mattress on the hardwood floor of an empty echoing house while watching the tonight show. grandma betty switched off the tv in the lights. you've done good work today. she said. i'd forgotten that dartmouth in quiet were the same. the cars seemed bright and loud.

driving by just past the front door. which open into the room which we lay. i thought and thought like added every night until i wished my mind have a switch i could flip. i felt grandma get up in the almost darkness. she said she was going to go p and what when i like a glass of water. she turned on the kitchen light and screamed hundreds of cockroaches ran across. hit by sunlight. they ran to the bathroom. others scurried around the bottom of the refrigerator. some ran towards the dark dining room and on the mattress. i sit stood up on the mattress and took a step back. a line ever roaches started up the side of the mattress. grandma was searching for her sandals.

those filthy pastors she said. get your stuff were blown this joint. and then it was after midnight. the stars, and the cattle. the wheat fields that were wild. grass. it was called cannon mall's cannonball states -- stagecoach road. anything but a filthy cockroach because she hated the battered. -- mastered. the german shepherd as we walked through. we went up the creaky old word

-- wood steps. if i lived to be an old woman and the trends of my early life continue by the time i die half of the canvas population well live in only five of 105 counties. people consolidated like seed companies. there is a strength and that environmentalists they might suggest. but perhaps a greater weakness dwight eisenhower a native of rural kansas said whatever america hopes to bring to pass in the world must first come to pass in the heart of america. the countryside is no more our nation's heart than are its cities. and they are more noble are dignified for their work in fields. but, to devalue in our social

investment in our language. the people who tend crops and livestock. it is to forget not just a country's foundation but its connection to the earth. to cycles of life scarcely witnessed an ill understood. for the varied vision. i talk about him previously in this chapter they want and balance both economically and environmentally needs a strong chamber outside its metropolis. those places that we hear are dwindling the life force that

flows back into that will likely be from other places. the meatpacking towns have become some of the most diverse places in the country. as immigrants stream and to take factory jobs. according to the 2010 census the hispanic population had grown by 60% in the last ten years. is a shift now without tension but one that has been embraced by some small-town whites. of all of the gifts and challenges.

one of the most wonderful paradoxes is a closeness board and the biggest spaces. a deep intimacy force. having only one name or neighbor within 3 miles to help when you're sick. i went to new york city for the first time. we visited the statue of liberty. what i was excited to climb inside. ascending a narrow staircase. i suddenly had trouble breathing. i wasn't afraid of heights and

looked around and realize i could get out if i have to. i did know it but i was having a panic attack. the small space echoed with many voices i close my eyes and took deep breaths. like we were the only two people on earth. he was from boston as i recall. as you is he wanting a psychological quiz. panic was coursing through me. making my lungs and muscles feel tight i told him long story about him on a journey

through a forest and meadow i pause to ask him questions what animal is on the other side. the concept is something i heard somewhere. the crowd around us have gotten quiet to listen. i told him what i thought his mindset about who he was. how did i. that kid was so much braver than i am. he and others nodded along and amazement as for me i have

something to focus my mind on as we inch one metal step at a time towards the ground of the statue of liberty. for me it had been cultivated in rural lands. to the stars through difficulties. when we got to the top i wasn't scared anymore. someone took my picture. a view of the new york harbor behind me. that's how i have come to the resolve the tensions of my childhood. i'm my family members lives about country and city. i craved the opportunity that cities contained the most

essential to my well-being was a freedom of a flatlined horizon. as well as in adulthood. the united states developed the notion that the dividing line of class and geography separated two different kinds of people i knew that wasn't right. because both sides existed in me. where i was from, what i hoped to do in life. the places that best sustained me. straddling that supposedly line that i did i know i was about a difference of experience not of humanity. you would of been born on one side of that perceived divide. but that would not have predicted anything about the core of you. neither politics and most definitely not your character.

what a predicted the things you saw and did to some extent on one defining psychological tension guaranteed by your country's economy. everything you would decide whether to stay, go to try to go. and if you went no matter where you ended up like every immigrant you don't feel the invisible dirt of the motherland on the soles of the feet. [applause]. >> think you so much and i

wanted to talk to all of you now. i understand that someone is can have a microphone and maybe it set up you ask questions and observations. we have a lot in the audience in a very short amount of time. a few days ago and my mailbox came the k alumni magazine with your photo on the front. my question is in the article it mentions that you have said you don't want to bring a child in the poverty and i don't think you are in poverty now. i assumed that they were part of the writing process that

they knew what your writing and are they going to get residuals from this? >> they might also like to know the answer to that question. my family is different schools of thought about writing stories about one's family. in one school of thought is you write whatever you think and someone else sees some analyses at different they can write their own book if you don't like it. as a journalist or a memoirist. to handle someone and do this clunky thing of transforming the infinite human experience into a finite and inadequate character that's quite a gift to receive and have someone

blessing to do that. i always seek that blessing. and it's something that i and my approach different artists would have different opinions on this. i was checking in with them every step of the way and many of the passages in the book are written about events where i wasn't even born or present yet. those are constructed from many hours of interviews with close members of my family over the years. and so they also said they didn't want to read it until it came out. i should say by the way other than my mother like the only book person in my family. and the pride and riddick is read it they thought it was boring. you think i'm joking, but i am serious. this is so moving to me. my grandma is kind of the star

of the show that i was talking about she is like a very vivacious in a sharp-witted salty brought from the hard knock life. and just has the most generous spirit and this is how you know if anyone have a right to feel shorted somehow buy this book even though i made every attempt to get things right. ultimately one never maybe can't. she read it and she texted me. i laughed, i quiet -- i cried. there is the darkest moments of her life in this book. let's say one of her husbands breaking her jaw as they called it back then. the back alley abortion.

she is trying to escape that husband. so she let me tell the stories in in her text to meet the only thing she said to meet was me was i am so sorry that you have so much sorrow and strife as a child. i didn't know it. those are the people i'm proud to come from. and there with me every step of the way. >> by any chance did that have an impact on your life or work. >> did the iconic film picnic had any impact on your life. i am wondering. the themes of your book, class and this perceived divide how do you see those reflected in other popular culture now and films and novels perhaps.

>> excellent question. much of what i do as a journalist which is talk about class requires that i am operating in this media critic and that's because i take such a great issue with the way that these narratives are often cast usually by upper class white people who maybe have the best of intentions but nevertheless don't bat an eye about suggesting and that the entire working class is white or male or conservative. none of those things are true of course. where i come from its no more there than any other group. and so, i feel like most of the per trails that we see right now the news media portrayal is very much a politicized one. and it has to do with with this moment that were in. i felt like anytime i saw

where i was from. it was a stereotype or a character chair. sometimes there is just some wrote classes and involved in that. i think more often than that is just very well-intentioned storytellers who don't know any better. that's why we need diversification of our college campuses of our newsrooms and so many spaces that hold the power in the society. we often consider diversity as we actually shed along lines of race and gender. it's only fairly recently that i think we are acknowledging class is an aspect out right. it intersects with all of the above. it is a particular conundrum in this moment of historic wealth and equality.

i think most of the stories don't get it right because there is nobody from those places or experiences the end up with the privilege of telling them. it's so nice to read your book and i wanted to ask you something about the writing process it feels to me so much like you took 15 years to write this because it's so authentic and i loved the approach that you take writing it to an unborn daughter. at what point in your way writing process did you choose to do that? >> i love talking about how i crafted it. believe it or not i will shoot

you straight and i wouldn't say this if it wasn't true. i knew when i was a child that i was gonna write this book. i did not know exactly what it was can look like or what relevance it might have. but i would say that. i strategically made decisions along the way in order for it to become a reality so i was the editor of the rural high school newspaper. it represents an integration of fact in research-based nonfiction. the integration at the core of this book it's a long way of saying that it was finally during the years as a journalist which were in some parts served to pay the bills. i have to get by.

i didn't had two pennies to rub together. and things like artistic and creative pursuits take time and resources. that just slows down the process but the beauty of it and what i now think of that force me forced me along the way to gain a broader awareness of and a language for articulating why i sense that my family story might matter which of course is all of these issues about class and policy and even politics in place. i never could have articulated as a very young person when i was trying to get this going. those pieces of the puzzle because it happened over so many years. some of which there are many pages and this that are almost verbatim. and something i wrote my senior year at ku.

in the passages that are little bit more big picture cultural commentary. and now this came a little later. i could sense, i have published some essays and pieces of journalism that got a lot of attention around the world. i found the correlation in this process. the more i felt like i was gonna throw up at the night before they came out the more people appreciated them. and that of course has to do with vulnerability. an opening up a wound that many people carry for different reasons called shape. i was thinking to myself. i have this a book where things are not quite clicking together. i would not feel like i needed to throw up.

it's kind of like keeping the reader at arms length. this aspect of my psyche that has been so deep and i never even consciously think about it. i used to say to myself. it was so unacknowledged.

i observed that as a sensitive child. the conversation i would have with them. is my way of i knew she would be so sacred. that guided me for many years. are there any other questions? you clearly right with this.

for the amount of suffering that your family is. i'm curious if you have any sense of survivor's guilt. what an interesting question an important one. i think i'm hearing this from some the people. our stories are the same. it's not static.

escaping as we say the same outcomes that their beloved family members experience. i think that when i was a student at ku i was kind of the defining moment. as i described in this book for some kids supposedly those are like the wildest and most fun years of abandonment. i love being a student and academic. as i said in the book there is a reason with this perceived divide in any lasting way it's because it is a very painful crossing. it means that you are accomplishing the goal that are essential to your own

survival and well-being good news, but then by definition you are no longer the same as the people you love the most in the world. in terms of experience. that was painful. like i said earlier i was never a kid that wanted to get out. and yet there is something about my past and a good past one of the painful aspects of that means that i and people that share my story and any group. i am on inside my professional industry.

what if i'm carrying that as a late now. my family is so lovely and happy for me. i'm honestly like amazed and delighted. that i get to do this for a living. i also feel guilty about nothing. [applause]. we do had time for one more question. i was wondering for a moment

they have a legislative effort. we are at a time where that is really depending on how you look at it beyond that. racism doesn't exist anymore. and what some people say. the chief justice of the supreme court said racism doesn't exist anymore. if you could just reflect on that sort of place we are. were not really beyond that. i think we absolutely are not. what other historically marginalized groups. the federal government said if

we leave this up to a local communities the job in getting it done. words can essay the schools must integrate. and so, i do a sense we are at a moment where the story about the country and the short-term memory they should remain or be even more robust. in terms of the social hierarchy. when i was an undergraduate at the university of kansas i was a straight a student meeting people like mary claytor. i was excelling as a kid on a college campus. i literally did not know what

the term graduate school meant. so much for kids who come from places like i do just like the language of talking about the things that are taken for granted. i was living at the biggest dream i head for myself. my senior year of college. i will confess that i have no intention of going to graduate school once they explained to me what it was. but, it came with the summer research stipend to spend a summer where i wouldn't have to break my back.

instead i could use that statement to research this book. i also have the undergraduate research road -- research award. that was a federal program. it played such a pivotal role in my life. some people would love to look at my story and say you, work hard all good. i'm here someone who really represents the exception to the rule. my job now is to shine a light on the fact for all this

people that don't have the privilege of being at this podium. [applause]. the book came out and i read an advance copy. how many people have read this book so far? >> there are so many books to be sold tonight. i am a native to begin. a lot of them know the story. i don't think that. this is such a powerful and timely story. they sell off the raven tonight.