Smarsh challenged a typically male vision of the rural working class with her first book, Heartland, starring the bold, hard-luck women who raised her. Now, 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 -- including those averse to the term "feminism" -- as exemplified by Dolly Parton's life and art. Far beyond the recently resurrected "Jolene" or quintessential "9 to 5," 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.

Explores how the music of Dolly Parton and other prominent women country artists has both reflected and validated the harsh realities of rural working-class American women. Growing up amid Kansas wheat fields and airplane factories, Smarsh witnessed firsthand the 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. Country music was a language among women-- and no one provided that language better than Dolly Parton. Here Smarsh explores the overlooked contributions to social progress by such women as exemplified by Dolly Parton's life and art. She shows how Parton's song offer a springboard to examining the intersections of gender, class, and culture. -- adapted from jacket