A mini review of The Forgotten Girls: A Memoir of Friendship and Lost Promise in Rural America, by Monica Potts.
Half memoir, half biography, The Forgotten Girls chronicles an Arkansas native’s attempt to trace the cause of the destructive spiral of her best friend’s life. Ms. Potts, who moved away from small-town Clinton, sees the rising death rates of rural white women in Arkansas as tied to community values that bring women down and keep them in poverty and abusive relationships. (Sadly, she includes evangelical conservatism as a major culprit.)
I’m also an Arkansas native who grew up with much less money than the self-described lower middle class Potts family. I also moved away from the state as an adult. But I have a different perspective than this writer. I’m a Christian, and I view faith-based drug rehab centers and food pantries as laudable efforts, not poor substitutes for government programs. However, I think it was helpful to read the perspective of someone on a very different wavelength from my own. (Even though her reliance on abortion as a primary answer to teen pregnancies made me wince—I see that as murder and can’t ever justify it).
Understanding a Different Point of View
“Seek first to understand, then to be understood.”
Stephen Covey
Completing this book was my attempt to take Covey’s advice. I think Ms. Potts made some excellent points about the lack of effort and education spent to help disadvantaged students who could escape the cycle of poverty and crime if they knew that they had other options. I certainly didn’t know that Ivy League schools could be within the reach of poor people like myself when I was a graduating high school senior in Arkansas, and I can’t imagine that many Arkansans would have known. Education isn’t always the answer to a good life, but it is often a decent way out of poverty.
In summary, The Forgotten Girls is a good read, but one to be read while fully aware of the writer’s beliefs and agenda. Find it on Amazon or at your local library.
If you’re looking for a great biography to read, check out my mini review of Irena’s Children.