ABSTRACT
This book is one of the first collections on a neglected field in American literature: that written by and about the working-class. Examining literature from the 1850s to the present, contributors use a wide variety of critical approaches, expanding readers’ understanding of the critical lenses that can be applied to working-class literature. Drawing upon theories of media studies, postcolonial studies, cultural geography, and masculinity studies, the essays consider slave narratives, contemporary poetry and fiction, Depression-era newspaper plays, and ethnic American literature. Depicting the ways that working-class writers render the lives, the volume explores the question of what difference class makes, and how it intersects with gender, race, ethnicity, and geographical location.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
part |107 pages
The Realities of Working-Class Life
chapter |18 pages
“Between the Outhouse and the Garbage Dump”
chapter |16 pages
Respectability, Refinement, and the Underclass
part |18 pages
Pedagogy and Promises
chapter |16 pages
Bridges, Not Ladders
part |51 pages
The Experience of Poverty
part |61 pages
Reconsidering Class, Gender, and Nation