Why don’t more poor people write about their lives?
Oh yes, they’re poor.
I’ve been working over the past couple of months to prepare a syllabus for a course I’m teaching this fall, an intro course entitled “Women: Images and Ideas.” Contrary to what I expected going into this, I had a much easier time preparing for most of the weeks than I have for the week focusing on gender and class, and with my final product due for review and revision in a couple of weeks, I find myself questioning why it’s been so hard to find good, short pieces by and about those living in poverty (or who have lived in poverty).
I took a class this past semester on women’s auto/biographical writings, and one of the books we read - ostensibly in the week on class - was Barbara Ehrenreich’s Nickel and Dimed.
I’m not sure if I’ve spoken about the book before, but as someone who has always, until very recently, been very poor, I have a lot of philosophical problems with Ehrenreich’s book. Besides the blatant racism she exhibits in some parts of the book, I found problematic the very premise that one could even hope to experience even a fraction of what it’s like to live in poverty. This problem was only compounded, of course, by the fact that Ehrenreich’s little experiment allowed her to start with a car, and to guarantee herself that, no matter what, she wouldn’t resort to homelessness. I remember, writing a response to this book, asking my professor if she’d picked it as an example of how not to write a memoir, or at least an exposé of working-class experiences. Regardless of all these problems, though, the book seems to be a staple in college courses about class, or at least in which class is addressed.
And I find myself asking, as I prepare my syllabus, why is this? Why are there essays that are considered essential, even foundational to a feminist course of study on a wide variety of topics, but very few well-known essays on class (that were actually written by people from a lower-class background)? And then I remember poor people don’t really have access to the resources that they’d need to publish their stories, so the people you have talking about their “working-class experiences” - or at least the people we know about - tend to be wealthy, highly-educated, heterosexual white folks. And that’s sad.
I’d like to think it’s not true, and that a lot of poor people are out there, writing their stories. There are one or two memoirs, yes, but I haven’t come across many essays, or even article-length pieces. Maybe I’ve just missed all these essays as a result of majoring in a highly not-Women’s-Studies discipline in my undergrad years. Maybe, too, the lack has something to do with that impostor phenomenon that I’m told we all experience, only in reverse; perhaps once you’ve gotten a foothold in academia, you no longer feel qualified to write as a member of the working poor.
Ultimately, I did find some really excellent pieces, things that, perhaps, should be staples in discussions of socioeconomic class, but I still wish there were more out there. Why don’t more people know, for example, about this book? Or this one? And what papers are out there that I don’t know about?
Serious question: what are the possible essential readings for a course, or even a unit, on class?
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The criticisms of my students would serve as a good warning to visitors of Seeworthy: she talks too fast, she's too hard on us, she assigns too much work, and you have to be a dyke to get a good grade.
In other words, I'm a big, fat, queer, feminist meanie, and I am totally out to get you. Graaagh!
So, you probably know about her, but, well, I love her, so I am going to talk about it anyway. Dorothy Allison has some great short story collections, some of it having to do with sexuality, but most of it having to do with growing up poor in the South. I reccomend this one, this one, or this one, in that order. Her novels are excellent too, but are probably too long.
I haven’t read it yet, unfortunately. But it’s one I’ve wanted to read for a while.
Without a Net: The Female Experience of Growing Up Working Class, edited by Michele Tea
Rachel and Heidi, thank you! Assuming that’s the same Allison who wrote Bastard Out of Carolina, yup, I know about her, but I did *not* know she had shorter collections. Yay! I’ll have to check them out.
And Heidi, thanks for that - I hadn’t heard of it, but I’ll see if I can get it sometime soon.
same Allison
i was going to recommend without a net as well - shannon read it and i’m pretty sure she approves.
and i’ll third dorothy allison. she also has a collection of poetry called the women who hate me. shannon approves of that one, as well. in fact, shannon wrote part of her thesis on it. indeed.
I actually own Without A Net.. but I’ve yet to actually read it. I suck! Good to know it has some fans.
I could write paragraphs on how I loathe Nickel and Dimed. Oh wait - I already have.
You may have stumbled upon this already, but just in case. The resources list may be more of what you are looking for, or at least a start.
http://www.temple.edu/tempress/chapters_1400/1646_ch1.pdf
Dorothy Alison’s ‘Two or three things I know for sure’ is amazing. If you are looking for fiction Lynda Barry’s ‘Cruddy’ covers a lot of what you mention, in a surreal sort of way.
My question is- does it have to be the written word? I live nowhere near the land of academia (way to secluded for me) but I do recall many worthwhile documentaries on the subject of Women and Poverty and Class, as well as Gender Issues. If you can go to photographic and cinematic ‘writings’ you may find a wealth of info there. Most recently I saw one about Prom, oddly enough that has a segment about a queer prom that looked at all of those issues. I am rambling now and have not done any research on the films and exhibits I remember, but wanted to post the thought before it escaped.
Hey SM - thanks for the link. As for what it has to be - pretty much anything. The course incorporates spoken word, television, art and film, so it can be any media. I’ll look into documentaries - did you have any specific to recommend?
It’s a funny thing that the academic study of “class” very rarely has anything to do with what’s really out there in the world. We had a professor who was very classist, if she had an inkling that her students had more money than she considered “acceptable” then she would treat them like dirt. And yet her attitudes about welfare and other things that the poor tend to encounter were obviously based on living a life where she never truly encountered those things.
I think people just can’t wrap their minds around poverty without truly experiencing it, and I don’t mean in a “study” I mean by it happening. Most Americans are one paycheck away from the poverty line, and yet they can’t seem to have any sympathy for the people that have fallen under…or maybe it’s empathy that they lack.
I’m rambling. I’ve just also been thinking about this lately because of things I’ve been hearing on the news and such. I was never truly “poor” because I had people out there looking out for me, and taking care of me. But it was only my family and friends that kept me from it, and I can appreciate that a lot of people don’t have that.
And I knew there was a reason I hadn’t bothered to read Nickled and Dimed.
When I was going through a tight time I tried to write about it, and was complimented on my candidness but it was difficult to continue simply because it felt like I was going over the same stuff every time I’d post. Plus, I try to be as uplifting as I can be whether I’m down or up, and I couldn’t bring myself to write about my experiences when it would sound depressing so I’d just not write anything at all. Crazy, now that I think of it. I suppose I just didn’t feel “poor” in the “living in squaller” or “on the wrong side of the tracks” kind of way. We owned our own house, we were just cash-poor at the time. Thankfully we had our freezer stocked to brimming before the money stopped coming in, so we never had a time where we were considering boiled boot for dinner. We came close, but then our house was sold and our business began to boom again. Anywho…
Tracy, thanks for sharing. I totally agree with you about how it’s hard to share… I was in a writing class once where I wrote about a portion of the time I was homeless as a kid, when my mom and I lived in a junkyard. It really didn’t seem that terrible to me, and I was trying to convey something other than just “depressing,” but when people hear poverty or homelessness, they automatically shut off and get their pity thing on (often, anyway). It sucks, and it makes it so hard for people to tell the stories they need to, and for others to actually *listen*.