Grab the Lapels

Audiobook Mini Review: She Come By It Natural by Sarah Smarsh

About mini reviews:

Maybe you’re not an audio book person, or maybe you are. I provide mini reviews of audio books and give a recommendation on the format. Was this book improved by a voice actor? Would a physical copy have been better? Perhaps they complement each other? Read on. . .

Apparently, my local library system is cleaning house on audiobook CDs, because so many have entered the Friends of the Library sale just recently. To be fair, new vehicles no longer have CD players in them, so folks rely on apps like Libby and Hoopla, free through the library, instead. I grabbed probably two dozen nonfiction audiobook CDs so I can learn while I drive.

Sarah Smarsh reads She Come By It Natural, which is nice because Smarsh is from Kansas, and her southern twang captures the essence of Dolly Parton’s lived experience. I wasn’t sure what to expect; would Smarsh’s book be another Dolly Parton autobiography, a look at Parton’s songs, or maybe analysis of how Parton is different from her contemporaries? The book is a collection of articles Smarsh wrote and published in 2017, so even though something may have happened a few years ago, Smarsh preserved her original pieces, and you hear “one year ago.” It can be a little weird, but to be fair, I was listening to the audiobook in 2024, so even if Smarsh had updated the timeline, it would still be out of date because She Come By It Natural was released in 2020.

Although I enjoyed the book, I’m not sure it was advertised accurately. The full title is She Come By It Natural: Dolly Parton and the Women Who Lived Her Songs. Smarsh occasionally references her grandmother, who had at least five husbands, all of whom abused her and walked all over her, so she kicked them to the curb. Smarsh herself grew up poor in a place that folks on the coast make fun of for being “hillbilly” territory. Her website says she was “born a fifth-generation Kansas farm girl, the child of a carpenter and a teen mom.” Although Smarsh’s grandma was an interesting character, the subtitle says “women,” plural, and I wondered who else that was supposed to include.

Mostly, Smarsh covers phases of Dolly’s life, such as pairing with a male co-host who claimed she owed her money for his presence making her famous, or how famous journalists, even women, would ask Dolly about her body, not her music. When I was growing up, Dolly Parton was someone we laughed about for having “big boobs,” and that was all we knew. Children would put balloons under their shirts and say, “Look, I’m Dolly Parton!” Smarsh notes that only recently, with Gen Z, has Parton garnered the respect she deserves for her business savvy, feminist (though she won’t call it that) perspective, and philanthropy (donating millions of books, building Dollywood to boost the economy in Tennessee, gifting stipends to families whose homes burnt in a Tennessee wildfire, and donating to help research the Covid-19 vaccine).

While She Come By It Natural wasn’t quite what I expected, and I do wonder if reading Parton’s own memoir that she published in 1994 would be more beneficial, I enjoyed this short work about an American treasure.

26 comments

  1. We made fun of Parton’s boobs when I was a kid too, though it came from my parents because I didn’t know any other kid who really knew who she was and since they made fun of her I thought it was ok. My parents listened to country music and we watched Hee Haw on TV. I have great respect for the woman and I wonder how much knowing people made fun of her body has wounded her. Have you listened to the rock album she made after she was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame? Most of the songs are duets, she doesn’t really have a voice for rock music, but the album is great fun.

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    • I’m not sure if I heard any of her rock songs, but that’s okay. At this point, she’s more a leader and icon that musician to me. I believe that she, like Willie Nelson, considers herself a songwriter first and foremost. Last I saw of her online, because I don’t frequent any social media spaces regularly, was after Lil Nas X did his rendition of “Jolene,” and Parton shared the video, claiming she loved it. It really is interesting to hear that song by a gay man and think about what “please don’t take my man” means for him. I loved it.

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  2. It’s so fun to hear little kids at my library exclaim, “It’s Dolly!” when they see the poster for Imagination Library on my desk at work. I mean LITTLE kids, like three years old. They know she’s the lady who sends them their books in the mail each month. So it’s cool to see how perceptions of her have changed since I was a kid and we only knew about her because of her breasts. But I will say that down here in Tennessee she is as close to a saint as possible – better not say anything bad about her! (As if I would!)

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  3. You’re so right that the respect for Dolly Parton has really skyrocketed lately. I love her philanthropic side, she puts other celebrities to shame, and she seems to really invest in worthwhile causes (like children’s literacy, although of course, i’m a bit biased haha). I also love the song 9 to 5, it HITS as the kids say these days

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  4. I think many people made fun of Dolly for her boobs, big blond hair and “painted face”. Why we do this I don’t know. But, it soon became clear that not only was she a savvy person, but also a person with a big heart, and we came to see that the look was as much a persona. But that’s off the topic of your audiobook. I’m intrigued by the title, and your question about the “womEn” who lived her songs. It sounds like it could have been an interesting sociological book, drawing links between life and art, but it sounds not. An opportunity lost.

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    • Parton openly describes her admiration for the local prostitute, this woman who looked larger than life, and has modeled her own looks off of that woman. They performance of being Dolly, the tucking and tightening and face and hair, may all be part of why drag queens love Dolly, too.

      There were a few references to Smarsh’s grandmother and how her life was basically what Parton was singing about, though nothing in the audiobook indicated that Parton was the victim of domestic violence, like Smarsh’s grandma.

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  5. Darn it, my comment seems to have got lost – or gone to your spam?

    I won’t repeat all I said except to say that I’m intrigued by your question about the “womEn who lived her songs”. Sounds like it’s a missed opportunity to do a fascinating sociological analysis of the links between life and art (in this case popular/country music). I would have enjoyed hearing about that.

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      • Exactly, what the heck! I find I need to check spam every week or so. The good thing is that it’s no longer so full of spam it’s hard to find any real comments there. But the bad thing is why do real comments, particularly from people supposedly known to the site, end up there? A mystery.

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        • Yes, I used to get sooooo many comments about diet pills and pornography, but that has been reduced a good deal, even from my spam folder. I have no clue why some comments from friends end up there other than maybe WordPress cracked down hard to get rid of so many spammers that there are some casualties.

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  6. I don’t think I was really aware of Dolly Parton until I was an adult, since she’s not such a big figure here – Jolene and 9-5 are part of the cultural landscape but those are the only two of her songs I could confidently name. So the first thing I really knew about her was her book charity, which I heard about in the context of a similar programme being rolled out in my local area. In terms of the book itself, it seems a bit strange that the author didn’t update the pieces, even to change the dates – when I’ve read essay collections in the past, the author has normally at least tweaked them for inclusion in the book!

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    • Yeah, I’m still not sure what her reasoning was for not updating her work. It almost sounded like she pulled the articles verbatim from the online magazine on which they were originally published. Typically, people don’t do that, viewing a book, instead, as an opportunity to reflect and update.

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  7. I was only dimly aware of Dolly Parton when I was growing up but our community benefits hugely from her Imagination Library. When we used to get the books, my kids would excitedly proclaim them to be “from Dolly Parton” and I think they kind of thought she was a distant aunt sending them gifts personally. This book does sound a little odd though; I think I’d rather read a memoir of Dolly’s life.

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    • I didn’t realize the Imagination Library was available in Canada! How lovely. And another person commented that little kids, like three years old, also say their books are from Dolly as if they know her. Soooooo cute. I hope people do a little video of kids saying such things and Dolly has seen them. I think she would love that. I know there is a book about Dolly’s life from a songwriting perspective, which I have on audio, that I’m looking forward to reading. At Christmas I like watching her special during which she describes what Christmas was like when she was a girl, telling stories about the songs she then sings.

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