Beth Macy, PAPER GIRL: A Memoir of Home and Family in a Fractured America
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[0:45]Beth Macy is the author of Paper Girl, a memoir of home and family in a fractured America.
[0:50]Beth is one more than two dozen national journalism awards including a Neiman Fellowship for
[0:53]Journalism at Harvard University, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and a Los Angeles Times book
[0:58]prize for Dopesick, which was made into a Peabody Award winning series for Hulu.
[1:02]Three of her books have been New York Times best-sellers.
[1:05]She lives in Roanoke, Virginia.
[1:06]Welcome, Beth.
[1:07]Thank you so much for coming on Totally Book to talk about Paper Girl, a memoir of hope and
[1:12]family in a fractured America.
[1:14]Congratulations.
[1:15]Thank you so much to me.
[1:17]It's an honor to be here.
[1:19]Oh my gosh.
[1:20]Can you tell listeners what your book is about?
[1:22]Sure.
[1:23]I grew out of a op-ed piece I wrote for The New York Times in 2020.
[1:27]I was right off the election and I couldn't figure out what was happening to my hometown
[1:33]and my family.
[1:34]My mother was dying.
[1:35]She was in her 90s and I had a stroke.
[1:38]And it happened to be this Saturday after the 2020 election.
[1:44]And she was literally breathing like her last breaths and the hospice nurse said, oh,
[1:51]they called it for Biden.
[1:53]My sister, who was evangelical and had long been and but had never really been political
[1:59]before said, you wait.
[2:01]It's fraudulent.
[2:02]He won't win.
[2:03]And mom is going, and I just thought, what the heck has happened?
[2:10]And so I grew up in this small town in Western Ohio.
[2:14]It was a place that had been a celebrated stop on the Underground Railroad.
[2:19]And when I had noticed as I was going home more as my mom was sick, I live in Virginia.
[2:24]This is there were now Confederate flags died in the streets and my relatives and I no
[2:32]longer agreed on basic facts, even the weather and what was causing all the storms.
[2:39]So I thought after I wrote this piece and the Times and I got so much feedback in like
[2:44]one hour, I thought, wow, I'm not the only one going through this.
[2:47]And it turns out 20% of Americans are estranged from family members because of politics.
[2:53]And we weren't exactly estranged, but I decided to like for two years I went home.
[3:00]I spent about a week every month embedding in my hometown, which I hadn't lived in 40
[3:06]years, to find out what was left of the people I love, to raise me and what if anything
[3:13]was left of my family.
[3:14]Well, well, the way you tell the story to weaving in your own experiences and the experiences
[3:20]of people in the town, pain, support, of a town not just affected by politics, but just
[3:29]so much strife, so much bad luck, so many, such a lack of opportunity for the people there
[3:35]and sort of the whole class of people who can no longer find their way.
[3:41]And you show us example after example of this and you show a lot about your own family
[3:46]and your parents and all that, which let us see who you are as a person, which I also
[3:51]found fascinating.
[3:53]And then to see you digging deep into what happened since I found absolutely fascinating.
[4:00]And I opening about what, as you said, is happening in so many places.
[4:04]So yeah, I mean, I think we all live on bubble in bubbles no matter what our bubble
[4:08]is.
[4:09]Not everybody.
[4:10]And so it was quite frankly, even though I was always in touch with my relatives, it was
[4:16]a shock.
[4:17]It was a shock to me that graduation rates had plummeted 10 years that the number of kids
[4:25]in foster care had tripled, that I mean, these are things you would never know if you're
[4:29]driving through this town, which just some, one, some best hometown in Ohio award.
[4:34]It looks like Mayberry on the surface and it's got some cool stuff going on some new stuff.
[4:42]But you know, a block or two from the town square, you see the underbelly playing out.
[4:49]And the thing that, I mean, the reason why I was so just, it felt so urgent to me is because
[4:55]I had once delivered that paper.
[4:57]I had written for papers, I wrote for papers for almost 30 years, including the paper
[5:04]I delivered when I was little.
[5:06]That was my, one of my college internship jobs.
[5:09]And it's still there, but it's like owned by a hedge fund and they're basically one and
[5:13]a half reporters.
[5:14]They can't even cover city council anymore.
[5:16]So all the stuff I was finding out on my research, I was telling other people and they
[5:22]didn't really know.
[5:23]I mean, some did.
[5:24]The teachers know what's going on.
[5:25]The guy who runs the use center knows what's going on.
[5:29]The police chief, the police chief who has watched emergency mental health calls increased
[5:36]by a factor of nine and 40 years.
[5:39]He knows what's going on.
[5:41]But as someone near the end of the book says in Urbana, it's the country call upset and
[5:46]the ghetto set and with the demise of the middle class, these two sets have no idea what's
[5:54]going on with each other.
[5:56]So the whole exercise was really eye opening and there were some hopeful parts, but it
[6:02]was also a mixed bag.
[6:04]And so after this whole experience and having written the book, like what next, like what
[6:09]can we do before more towns keep sliding?
[6:13]I mean, your example of the paper, I know you mentioned that, you know, the paper became
[6:16]like a couple of Instagram posts and some press releases and like where is the news?
[6:21]How do people record that people were watching hours of, you know, what was going on in
[6:26]Russia and developing all these fake ideas and yet they don't know what's going on a mile
[6:32]from their house?
[6:33]Like how do we come back things like that?
[6:35]What do we do about it?
[6:36]Yeah.
[6:37]Well, I think we all have to get active in our own communities right now.
[6:43]I have gotten much more politically active since even since I finished writing this.
[6:48]I think we have to make alliances and we need to start running better people for office.
[6:54]We need to support what little local media we have.
[6:59]We need to, I mean, one of the reasons we need better people running things is because
[7:03]we need to shore up our public education system, which is so under attack these days with
[7:10]with all these private school vouchers and, you know, in my hometown as the middle class
[7:18]thinned out, the middle class families who were still there, they were witnessing the decline.
[7:24]They start sending their kid to an adjacent school district and then that money goes with
[7:28]them to this more rural farmland, not so distress.
[7:34]And when that money goes with them, it just hurts everybody that's left behind and the
[7:38]saying that the private school, the real shocker was just every single factory on our
[7:44]I talked to was hard up from employees and we're having just terrible attendance issues.
[7:50]And in the school, there was a parallel lot of people showing up as well.
[7:56]So, you know, we know that attendance went down during COVID, but in the places we
[8:02]likely to really go out there and do some of the programs I write about, the good examples
[8:07]happening elsewhere.
[8:08]I mean, they just don't have the funding for stuff like that.
[8:11]So it's the same kids not showing up for school, but the kids of parents who aren't
[8:16]shown up for work.
[8:18]And I mean, I was shocked when that Springfield story with the Haitian migrants blew up.
[8:25]I mean, that's like 20 minutes away from Havana.
[8:28]And I had been interviewing my ex-boyfriend who I hadn't seen in 38 years.
[8:33]And I knew he had gone for me extremely little rural Bernie Sanders to Holy Cow, a total
[8:41]180 deep into QAnon and other conspiracies and watching four to seven hours of Russian propaganda
[8:49]every day.
[8:50]And then suddenly, I felt like I was in the forced gun movie.
[8:54]He emerges as the leader of the anti- Haitian pushback in Springfield.
[8:59]And there he is on PBS NewsHour and all these other shows.
[9:05]And you know, at that point, he had gotten so almost verbally abusive to me that I cut
[9:11]off contact and, you know, a cop buddy of mine said, you need to carry a gun.
[9:17]I'm not totally anti-gun.
[9:19]I think there need to be serious restrictions.
[9:23]I've never owned one.
[9:25]And it was just like, wow, are we really at this verge of being in a civil war?
[9:31]I mean, it really shook me.
[9:32]Wow.
[9:33]Oh my gosh.
[9:34]How do you then go back to your life in Virginia after a week?
[9:38]Like how are you doing that emotionally, the shifting back and forth, uncovering and writing
[9:43]and trying to process something that shifted quietly and in a deadly way, right under
[9:51]our noses, right?
[9:52]I know.
[9:53]Well, one of the things I've done, and I'll admit, I started doing it just as a way to
[9:57]promote that the book was coming out.
[9:59]I've also had...
[10:00]always had author newsletters, I did with don't sick,
[10:02]and going back to a factory man, where I would tell people,
[10:05]was mostly about my stuff.
[10:07]And then I was like, the local media here,
[10:09]where I live in a moderate-sized city.
[10:13]It's about an urban area of about 300,000.
[10:16]We also have experienced the same decline in news.
[10:19]So I started using my sub-stack as a way
[10:22]to tell stories of how the new Trump administration's
[10:27]cuts, and policy choices were impacting real people
[10:32]on the ground here.
[10:33]And that's been, I mean, it's really fun.
[10:36]I'm basically a paper girl at heart.
[10:37]I'm still a reporter.
[10:39]And so today I just published the sub-stack about it
[10:44]was an update on this woman I had written about in 2014
[10:48]who, when she got out of prison, heroin, drug-related crime,
[10:55]she was able to be hired by this nail salon
[10:58]that was only hiring felons as a way
[11:00]to help him re-enter the workforce.
[11:02]And when I first wrote about her,
[11:03]like, she was a huge success.
[11:05]But in her goal of goals, she always wanted to be a nurse.
[11:09]And the salon owner took her under a wing.
[11:11]One of her patrons happened to be the hospital CEO
[11:15]and encouraged her to go into nursing.
[11:18]And she did with a lot of help.
[11:20]And I was on vacation recently.
[11:22]And I got an all-caps email from her 11 years later.
[11:28]And on her third try at nursing school, all-caps,
[11:33]I am a nurse.
[11:34]Excellent.
[11:35]So like, and you see, I mean, that's what,
[11:39]I think we fall for the easy story.
[11:42]But I know I learned best through a person.
[11:45]And when you can see a woman, like Ebony, that's her name,
[11:49]like, she had to rely on Medicaid.
[11:53]She had to rely on SNAP, both of those programs are being cut.
[11:57]She's now a, she works for a rehab, a drug rehab center.
[12:03]And she helps people in recovery, some of whom
[12:06]are also coming out of jail.
[12:08]But that rehab is paid for because of the Medicaid expansion
[12:12]in Virginia, and which was a huge portal for particularly
[12:19]men who we know die at a rate of two to three times
[12:23]more than women with substance use disorders die.
[12:29]That was really Medicaid has become their lifeline.
[12:33]And a lot of people who are more experts than I
[12:38]believe that these Medicaid cuts are really
[12:40]going to set us back 30 years on the opioid crisis.
[12:45]So I'm just learning how to connect the dots,
[12:48]because I'm not not to disparage my media colleagues.
[12:51]They're just not enough of them.
[12:52]And so that's been really eye opening and interesting too.
[12:56]And then I've also just become like,
[12:58]I go to these rallies every Monday at noon,
[13:01]a bunch of people meet outside of our no show
[13:04]congressman's office asking for a town hall.
[13:07]We've done it every single week since President's day
[13:11]in February asking for a town hall.
[13:14]I'm trying to get him to explain his support
[13:17]from these policies.
[13:19]And you also write about yourself
[13:22]that you were a beneficiary of a Pell Grant
[13:24]when you were trying to get yourself out
[13:27]and into the world and into college and all these things
[13:31]that you had aspired for and that those programs
[13:33]are being cut as well.
[13:35]Right.
[13:35]If I got that correct.
[13:37]Yeah.
[13:38]And that's something you wouldn't notice
[13:39]unless it was on your radar.
[13:41]I didn't notice it until I started teaching our local community
[13:45]college.
[13:46]And I realized there was this huge stigma
[13:49]against Pell Grant holders.
[13:50]And I'm like, wait, guys, I was a Pell Grant holder.
[13:52]Now, when I went to college, I went to a four year
[13:55]state school in Ohio.
[13:58]We were so poor that I got a full program
[14:00]and it paid for everything.
[14:02]College was like $2,300 a year.
[14:05]It wasn't a lot, but it paid 100%.
[14:07]Now, if you're as poor per capita as I was,
[14:11]a Pell Grant is only going to pay for 30%.
[14:15]So me, born 15 years later, would not
[14:20]have been able to go to college, which would have been awful
[14:23]for me.
[14:23]I say going to college, say my life.
[14:25]But also, if you think about it, it's just,
[14:27]it's not physically sound.
[14:30]I have more than paid back a hundred times the over,
[14:35]anything I got from a grant with my taxes.
[14:38]Because I've earned so much more money
[14:41]and have been able to have a family
[14:43]in a very stable middle-class, middle-class life
[14:47]that otherwise I had never been available to me before.
[14:52]And you know, you'd ask to give graduation speeches a lot.
[14:55]And I always tell the story of feeling
[14:57]like a food stamp recipient in line at a whole foods.
[15:01]The first time I showed up at my cost-cutter college
[15:04]because everybody had to be hearing paid some money.
[15:07]You know, I had to have three jobs.
[15:09]But which was fine, but it was just,
[15:12]it just opened me up in so many ways
[15:15]that people who don't get to thank experience
[15:18]not only don't get to see that,
[15:19]but they don't get the opportunity to give back
[15:24]and do meaningful work that helps their communities.
[15:28]Not everyone, but by and large,
[15:31]particularly since the dumping of opioids
[15:35]in these very same communities
[15:37]where the factory jobs went away.
[15:39]I mean, I write about that a lot in dope city
[15:41]and then in the follow-up book,
[15:44]in the communities where the jobs went away
[15:46]or the in particular, the same communities,
[15:50]the big pharma companies targeted
[15:52]because there were lots of people on Medicaid,
[15:55]people with workplace injuries, legitimate injuries,
[15:58]who needed meds and then they did their pitch
[16:01]saying that this drug is non-addicted.
[16:04]And so you saw that playing out in Urbana,
[16:07]as well as Apoaccia and in cities and towns,
[16:12]all over America.
[16:14]But I was so busy raising my kids and having a career,
[16:19]it didn't really occur to me
[16:20]what had happened with the Pell Grant.
[16:21]And it got virtually zero-pressed
[16:26]because who would be the lobbyist
[16:27]that would stand up for that?
[16:28]Like there were a few, but not many.
[16:32]And so that was a really interesting thing.
[16:33]I had this hunch that that had happened,
[16:35]but really to go out and report it and see the figures.
[16:38]It was astonishing.
[16:40]And it goes back to Reagan's secretary of education
[16:44]called the idea that education,
[16:47]the LBJ said the secret to every problem of the world
[16:53]is education.
[16:54]And that's like profoundly moving to me
[16:57]because it was for me.
[16:58]But Reagan comes along in the 80s and appoints,
[17:03]starts the first real cuts of these programs
[17:07]in a secretary of education.
[17:08]William Bennett says the idea that if a poor kid goes
[17:12]to college and that's gonna help America
[17:16]is sociological, slim, and flamory.
[17:20]And I mean, we were just sold a bill of goods about that.
[17:24]And it's that same thread that you're seeing
[17:28]coming out now in Project 2025
[17:30]and the dissolution of the Department of Ed,
[17:33]that's coming.
[17:34]And just one more story if I may.
[17:39]I knew that when I started going back
[17:42]because I learned through people
[17:43]better than I wanted through studies and academics,
[17:46]I wanted to pick a young me.
[17:48]So I was, went all over town asking teachers, counselors
[17:53]who was a, because I was a good student.
[17:56]I wasn't like top of the class, but I was in the top 15.
[18:00]Who is a promising poor kid?
[18:02]And everybody pointed to the same kid.
[18:03]And he happened to be the director
[18:05]of the student director of the band, the drum major.
[18:07]And I was the president of the band.
[18:09]So the same, or band of whole climbers marching band,
[18:12]only the band is now in court of the size.
[18:15]We used to spell out the word hill climber
[18:17]in the field with our bodies.
[18:19]Now they can barely spell out the word Ohio.
[18:22]And Silas, I watched him at graduation.
[18:26]He gets a full scholarship to a nearby community college,
[18:30]but it's actually his rule.
[18:32]So it's an hour away.
[18:34]And that full scholarship isn't gonna pay for him
[18:37]to have reliable transportation.
[18:39]So I watched him go through a series of five clunker cars,
[18:42]something like four different jobs
[18:44]just during this 10 month certificate program
[18:48]to become a welder.
[18:50]And the difference in us,
[18:53]because I would go back to these teachers
[18:55]and I would report what I was seeing,
[18:56]what was happening with Silas and so much family drama
[19:00]dad overdosed and died, mom was in and out of prison.
[19:03]He was homeless, junior and senior years of high school.
[19:07]I mean, so much, my trauma would fit on Silas as pinky.
[19:10]He has so much more trauma than I have.
[19:12]But when I would go back to report that
[19:14]to the people who suggested he's the one I broke off,
[19:16]they would say, yeah, that's the new Beth Macy.
[19:20]And that was like, oh, that just got me.
[19:24]Cause he is.
[19:25]He's got's year and grittier and smarter than I was
[19:30]and hats off to him.
[19:32]And he's now raising his two younger siblings.
[19:35]He just turned 20.
[19:36]Oh my gosh.
[19:37]Well, I appreciate you introducing us to Silas
[19:40]in the book and all of breaking it down,
[19:45]the way you described it now.
[19:46]But really in detail in the book of,
[19:48]this is why this is not gonna work out for him.
[19:50]This is, these are the obstacles people don't think about.
[19:52]This is what's getting in the way.
[19:55]It's not enough to give a scholarship even
[19:58]if you're lucky enough.
[19:59]And just.
[20:00]It's really spelling it out for people who haven't thought a lot about the ins and
[20:04]outs and what that means.
[20:07]And therefore how change can happen as a result is really important.
[20:11]And also it's also an explanation for why we're so divided too, you know?
[20:16]So like, I'm certainly not the only one that has a hard time talking to our sister about
[20:20]politics.
[20:21]I mean, we don't even talk about it like period anymore, but we have to find a way to
[20:29]have a common language again, our trust is so broken down now.
[20:33]Yeah.
[20:34]And I don't know how you do that other than having conversations, getting really active
[20:39]in your local communities and rebuilding up networks that can help build back trust and
[20:48]in community.
[20:49]I did say the same thing, by the way, to my husband the other day.
[20:52]I was like, I feel like we are going to have a civil war.
[20:55]Like where else is this leading?
[20:57]Like everything is so divided.
[20:59]I feel like this is actually in the cards.
[21:02]And anyway, the fact that they're here.
[21:04]The very day there's a new threshold about it.
[21:06]Yeah.
[21:07]Like the gerrymander in Texas, so they flee and then the people in California are going
[21:11]to do the same thing.
[21:12]And it's like, somebody in my book says we're going to end up in little districts, all
[21:16]clustered with like-minded people, like in the hunger games.
[21:19]I think that almost every time I read the news.
[21:21]Oh my gosh.
[21:22]Great.
[21:23]Well.
[21:24]This is true.
[21:26]Thanks for sharing.
[21:28]I wish I would have.
[21:31]So let me know how many days I would do.
[21:33]But that was true.
[21:34]That was true.
[21:35]That was true.
[21:36]Most great.
[21:37]There were people that I reconnected with and one of my best friends, I've known her
[21:43]since I was four.
[21:44]She's a business leader in the town.
[21:45]She read an early copy and she said, you know, I think I'm going to change my media
[21:49]diet.
[21:50]It's like, wow, Betty, good on you.
[21:53]Yeah.
[21:54]Because some people aren't going to like it.
[21:56]And, you know, if it gets a few people to just go beyond that simple story that we have
[22:03]been fed in order to make corporations and wealthy people wealthier, that's all I can
[22:10]out for.
[22:11]Well, thanks so much for coming on.
[22:12]Really appreciate it.
[22:13]Appreciate it.
[22:14]Okay.
[22:15]Take care.
[22:16]Bye bye.
[22:17]Thank you for listening to totally booked with Zibi, formerly momstone have time to read
[22:21]books.
[22:22]We love to the show, tell a friend, leave a review, follow me on Instagram at Zibi Owens
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[22:30]Thanks so much.
[22:31]Oh, and bye the books.