Sarah Palin is underestimated. I didn’t need to read her 400+ page memoir to realize that, but the non-fiction narrative of “”Going Rogue: An American Life”” reinforces the fact that people don’t fully understand what she’s capable of or how much work she puts in.

The beginning chapters chronicle Palin’s Alaskan upbringing, which I found to be the most interesting, and most story-like part of the memoir, even though Palin uses generic language to describe her hometown. Palin is from a large, working class family, and many of her experiences are very real to the average person. It’s sweet to read about the fairytale manner in which Palin met her husband, Todd. They were high school sweethearts, and even though teenage romances rarely carry into adulthood and marriage, Palin’s love story just feels so American. Readers who appreciate happy endings and family tales will love this aspect of Palin’s book.

Palin was greatly beaten down by the press, so she spends much of the book providing explanations for her most criticized statements and actions. She states that she never said that she could see Russia from her backyard, just like Al Gore never came out and said he invented the Internet. She also writes that she transferred to so many different universities because she had to fund her own education and needed to take time off school to save money.

Palin was highly scrutinized when her unwed teenage daughter, Bristol, got pregnant. Palin never comes out and talks about how she felt about the event, or how she even reacted to the news. I was looking forward to learning about Palin’s thoughts on the matter, which is pretty significant and life changing for any family, so I was more than slightly disappointed that Palin didn’t want to share this information with her readers. If she’s going to refute everything that has been used against her, she should be more open in general.

As is to be expected, Palin addresses the problems with her Katie Couric interview, awhich Palin describes as biased. Palin justifies her nervous responses and stammer by stating that Couric’s condescending vibe was really hard to stomach. A significant portion of Palin’s memoir is devoted to self-defense and justification for mistakes. It’s almost as if Palin didn’t feel that she was properly represented in the media, so she decided to write her own book and hopefully sway the public to sympathize with her.

Then again, Palin may not have necessarily written this book. Entertainment Weekly reported that a ghost writer penned the whole thing, even though Palin mentions her lifelong appreciation for reading good books and writing. Because the book lacks any substantial literary description, it’s easy to believe that Palin didn’t write much of her own story. Even so, Palin clearly didn’t attempt to publish a work of creative writing.

The memoir intends to explain rather than paint a picture. Regardless, I’m not really sure what Palin expects to come out of this book. Having endured so much abuse from the media, it seems that she mainly seeks to convince the world that she’s not, in fact, a total moron and that she was unfairly portrayed in many ways. She reminds the public that she’s truly just a small town girl with a zest for politics, and for some reason, this really bothers her biggest critics. I’m hoping that the world will one day understand that she has the ability to accomplish a lot, and she doesn’t have to write a defensive book, or become president, to demonstrate this.

— Laura Donovan is the opinions editor of the Daily Wildcat.

She can be reached at letters@wildcat.arizona.edu.