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