She Come By It Natural: Dolly Parton and the Women Who Lived Her Songs

Name: She Come By It Natural: Dolly Parton and the Women Who Lived Her Songs
Price: 9.89 USD
Availability: InStock
Author: Sarah Smarsh
ISBN: 9781982157289

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. And no one provided that language better than Dolly Parton.

In She Come By It Natural, originally published in a four-part series for The Journal of Roots Music, No Depression, Smarsh explores the overlooked contributions to social progress by such women as exemplified by Dolly Parton’s life and art. Parton’s songs for decades 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 leader of a self-made business and philanthropy empire — offers a springboard to examining the intersections of gender, class, and culture.

The National Book Award finalist and New York Times bestselling author of Heartland focuses her laser-sharp insights on a sympathetic tribute to the icon Dolly Parton and — call it whatever you like — the organic feminism she embodies.