Sarah Smarsh's grandmother had dentures in her twenties, after her teeth were pulled out due to poverty. Robyn Curnow asks why good or bad teeth explain whether America is a meritocracy?

Smarsh's new book is called Bone of Bone; Essays on America by a Daughter of the Working Class.

Robyn wanted to talk to Sarah because she's rare commodity in America - a whisperer or translator of two Americas; rural, white, poor middle America and the educated, urbane newsrooms of the coasts. As one of the few people in a newsroom who have worked in a wheat field, Smarsh says she takes the stereotypes of middle America personally because they can get her people so wrong.

Not all white, poor Americans in rural areas are Trump supporters, in the same way not all New Yorkers are walking around with Black Lives Matter t-shirts. Sarah blames a fractured media and the Democrat Party ignoring large chunks of America where people have felt ignored, and to whom Donald Trump speak to.

How to bring divided Americans together? Dolly Parton, the Patron Saint of the American Working Class.

http://www.x.com/scribnerbooks

https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Bone-of-the-Bone/Sarah-Smarsh/9781668055601

http://www.searchingforamericapod.com

http://www.robyncurnow.net

http://www.x.com/robyncurnow

http://www.x.com/sarah_smarsh

http://www.instagram.com/sarah_smarsh