Pennsatucky's Teeth Analysis

When it comes to narrowing down end-of-the-year favorites, increasingly the only criteria that makes sense to me is, “How profoundly did this change the way I thought about its subject?” And reading this essay on class and poverty and dental care felt like following Sarah Smarsh around as she flipped on light switch after light switch, illuminating not only dark rooms I’d never thought to enter before, but also spaces I thought I knew well but which turned out to be all shadowed corners. It works so well, I think, because Smarsh seems to have sensed that this couldn’t just be a personal essay or a reported story or a piece of pop-culture criticism—to talk about Pennsatucky’s teeth is to talk about her grandmother’s teeth is to talk about her
own teeth is to talk about America itself.