The other reviews here don't seem to "get" the point of this book; it is autoethnography, so by definition the author must place herself in the story. I think it is really interesting, because what she is doing is analyzing race/class/gender in a very concrete setting, an American town. She is recognizing both exclusion and inclusion, privilege and disempowerment... this is a really interesting study for people who want to analyze the power dimensions that exist within American towns, and how they've changed over time (such as, in this case, the effects of the closure of a town's nuclear reactor on its overall employment and outlook).