Teaching class: a pedagogy and politics for working-class writing.

Teaching class: a pedagogy and politics for working-class writing. Culture has replaced brutality as a means of maintaining the statusquo [Latin, The existing state of things at any given date.] Status quo ante bellum means the state of things before the war. The status quo to be preserved by a preliminary injunction is the last actual, peaceable, uncontested status which preceded the pending controversy. . (Tuer 196) While class becomes an increasingly important categoryof analysis with-in academic discourse, it is simultaneously,paradoxically, being drummed out of our national rhetoric. In thisnation whose central myth was and remains the rise of the individualever-upwards through social and financial strata that, cloud-like,apparently fade away Verb 1. fade away - become weaker; "The sound faded out"dissolve, fade outchange state, turn - undergo a transformation or a change of position or action; "We turned from Socialism to Capitalism"; "The people turned against the President when he stole the as they are passed through, "class"remains the unspoken category. Politicians may talk about themiddle-class, or working people, but seldom are the words "workingclass" spoken in a national context (Keach 1994). The point can notbe made often enough that the New Right's assault on AffirmativeAction affirmative action,in the United States, programs to overcome the effects of past societal discrimination by allocating jobs and resources to members of specific groups, such as minorities and women. programs as well as on the reproductive choice of women (to namejust two), while perhaps most obvious as assaults based on visibledifferences of race and sex, are more subtly policies about class, sincethe effects of these policies will be experienced most harshly by thosewho are economically vulnerable. Insofar in��so��far?adv.To such an extent.Adv. 1. insofar - to the degree or extent that; "insofar as it can be ascertained, the horse lung is comparable to that of man"; "so far as it is reasonably practical he should practice as mainstream politics keep thebody politic BODY POLITIC, government, corporations. When applied to the government this phrase signifies the state. 2. As to the persons who compose the body politic, they take collectively the name, of people, or nation; and individually they are citizens, when considered divided into ethnic groups, each of which feels its owneconomic status threatened by other ethnic groups (rather thanthreatened by the power of capitalism and conservative politics), theformulation of a class-based consciousness is severely limited. Forthese reasons, the concept of class needs to be vigorously taken up intoday's classrooms, not as a substitute for analyses of race andgender, but as a constant extension of them. As Wai Chee Dimock andMichael T. Gilmore write in Revising Class, "We are compelled . . .to entertain a range of interactive relationsclass and culture, classand race, class and gender without making causality a one-directionalphenomenon, and without attributing to the first term a determinativeweight"(3). Performing readings of texts to which class is central(although not necessarily determinative) can reveal to students some ofthe ways that the cultural practices they learn in college (and longbefore) help maintain the status quo of a society increasingly polarized A one-way direction of a signal or the molecules within a material pointing in one direction. by privilege and want.My goal in this essay is to work toward the development of acontingent working-class aesthetic that can help students learn to thinkcritically about America's class system and, in particular, theirown position in relation to it. Focusing on cultural manifestations ofclass status rather than on purely economic ones, I discuss how classaffects reading practices.(1) I want to suggest ways of reading throughwhich middle-class students can, perhaps for the first time consciously,engage with the presence of class conflict while working-class studentsmay come to recognize some of their own lives reflected and affirmed ina literary text. This task, however, is fraught with difficulty becauseof the peculiar function of higher education in relation to class. Asthe briefest reading of almost any working-class autobiography orfiction reveals, it is education (and not money) that marks the (usuallytroubled) movement from working-class childhood to a middle-classadulthood. Institutions of higher education are a primary means ofsocializing students into a middle-class conformity since, at its mostconservative, corporate level, education works hand in hand with theState to produce leaders differentiated from workers.(2) Thus, todevelop a Working-Class Studies institutionally, or a working-classaesthetic (as this essay attempts to do) from within an institutionwhose goal has historically been to produce a national elite, is fraughtwith contradictions that seem to me at this moment irresolvable ir��re��solv��a��ble?adj.1. Irresoluble.2. Impossible to separate into component parts; irreducible. . Iproceed with this essay in the hopes that it can help generatediscussion about these difficult issues, knowing that even the attemptto read working-class literature "academically" may beinterpreted as cooptation.An early part of the academy's intervention in matters of classstruggle has been the recuperation recuperation/re��cu��per��a��tion/ (-koo?per-a��shun) recovery of health and strength. recuperation,n the process of recovering health, strength, and mental and emotional vigor. of fiction and autobiography byworking-class people. Perhaps the best known of these are writers activeduring the 1930s: this decade certainly occupies a privileged spot inthe fledgling field of working-class studies.(3) Leftist feminists haveled the way in the recovery and affirmation of writers such as TillieOlsen Tillie Lerner Olsen (January 14, 1912–January 1, 2007) [1] was an American writer, associated with the political turmoil of 1930s and the first generation of American feminists. , Meridel LeSueur, and Agnes Smedley Agnes Smedley, (February 23 1892 – 6 May 1950) was an American journalist and writer known for her chronicling of the Chinese revolution.She embraced and advocated various issues including women's rights, Indian independence, birth control, and China's Communist , all of whom write powerfullyand provacatively about growing up poor and female in the first third ofthe twentieth century.(4) All of these three writers were rediscoveredand revalued during the 1970s by white feminist scholars searching for afuller vision of women's history ''This article is about the history of women. For information on the field of historical study, see Gender history.Women's history is the history of female human beings. Rights and equalityWomen's rights refers to the social and human rights of women. and literary expression; all threehave since come to be identified as the core of working-class womenwriters (especially Olsen). At the same time (the 1970s), however, otherwomen not identified primarily as "working class" by thescholars interested in the legacy of the 1930s were also writing aboutthe struggles of growing up working class or underclass in America. Notalways of a leftist politics, these women writers nonetheless havecontributed significantly to the articulation of class concerns inAmerica. When their work is pulled from other traditions of writing -African-American, Latina, immigrant, lesbian - we can begin to see abody of working-class writing that is much more broadly inclusive thanthat whose central focus is the work of white leftist writers from the1930s. By expanding our definition of working-class literature, we canexpose students to a range of writers - and a range of politicalpositions - to encourage them to think about the ways in which classdivisions are created and sustained through literary practices common intoday's colleges, universities, and publishing practices.The essay which follows is in two parts. First, in order to disruptsome basic assumptions about the relation between class position and theuse of common literary techniques by both readers and writers, I showthe ways in which class divisions are created and sustained throughcommon literary practices. I read, in this first part, the criticalreception of three novels that focus on working-class life: AliceWalker's The Color Purple (1982); Carolyn Chute's Beans ofEgypt, Maine (1985); and Dorothy Allison's Bastard Out of Carolina(1992). In the second part of the essay, I provide a close reading ofSharon Isabell's short story "Different Worlds," wherethe author uses literary techniques to expose the extent to which classdifferences and class conflict permeate permeate/per��me��ate/ (-at?)1. to penetrate or pass through, as through a filter.2. the constituents of a solution or suspension that pass through a filter.per��me��atev. not only the content of thestory, but the sites of its writing and reading as well. An importantcomponent of this section is the discussion of student reaction toIsabell's texts, since these reactions so clearly register what isat stake in the teaching of working-class writing. Finally, I hope tosuggest ways of challenging students to raise questions that pertain to pertain toverb relate to, concern, refer to, regard, be part of, belong to, apply to, bear on, befit, be relevant to, be appropriate to, appertain to contemporary politics inside and outside the classroom.1. Sustaining Difference: Language as a Class MarkerNow the speech of the oppressed can only be poor, monotonous,immediate: his destitution des��ti��tu��tion?n.1. Extreme want of resources or the means of subsistence; complete poverty.2. A deprivation or lack; a deficiency.Noun 1. is the very yardstick of his language.(Barthes 148)Looking for the timeless and transcendent, for contemplation as anend, for metaphysical complexity of language, and for pastel ironies oftone can only obscure and demean de��mean?1?tr.v. de��meaned, de��mean��ing, de��meansTo conduct or behave (oneself) in a particular manner: demeaned themselves well in class. the objectives and excellence ofworking-class art. (Lauter 842)The academic reception of working-class women's writing isaffected by class identification and its attendant definitions of art.As both epigraphs above make clear, the relationship between languageand class is of paramount importance in determining not only the qualityof working-class art, but its very possibility. Bakhtin writes"[t]he primary stylistic project of the novel as a genre is tocreate images of language" (Bakhtin 366). Understood in terms ofnovels that register different classes, this means that each renderingof working-class speech is always thrown into relief by the inclusion ofstandard speech that is also middle-class speech. Middle-class andworking-class speech can be identified as such only in relation to eachother. Because the middle-class is culturally dominant intwentieth-century America, its discourse surrounds and verifies thelanguage of the working-class. Middle-class discourse is the (implied)center of meaning, the standard, the normal, while working-classdiscourse is the (implied) other, the deviant, the flawed. So long asthe creation of multiple images of language is both the project and theproving of the author, then the status of the working-class writer willremain untenable.To see this issue of images of language in a different light, from adifferent perspective, students might read Judy Grahn's essay"Murdering the King's English," the introduction to ashort story anthology titled True to Life Adventure Stories (in whichSharon Isabell's stories first appeared). Grahn writes:I have given a good deal of thought to the origins of folk English,to women and English, to the King's English, and to the phrase,'murdering the King's English'. Murdering the King'sEnglish can be a crime only if you identify with the King.[I]n True to Life Adventure Stories there is never an outside andall-knowing narrator NARRATOR. A pleader who draws narrs serviens narrator, a sergeant at law. Fleta, 1. 2, c. 37. Obsolete. who speaks standard English while quotingcharacters who speak what is called "dialect" or slang, orpeople's English. . . . [To edit] conventionally . . .would . . .besaying that the occupation of writer belongs only to the upper class andthose who can pass by using its standards; no one else need apply -except as a character, an object to be quoted and described, and ineffect, looked down upon from a class distance. (10-11)Grahn's radical editorial practices begin to make clear howimportant the images of language are in informing our encounters withtexts - as well as how deeply embedded in issues of class those imagesare. Encouraging students to recognize the extent to which theirexperiences with literature are circumscribed circumscribed/cir��cum��scribed/ (serk��um-skribd) bounded or limited; confined to a limited space. cir��cum��scribedadj.Bounded by a line; limited or confined. by assumptions about classdifference (registered through language, especially dialect versus"standard" English) will enable them to see the way theirlives beyond the classroom are also informed by class difference.The novels of Alice Walker, Carolyn Chute Carolyn Chute (born June 14, 1947) is an American writer and populist political activist strongly identified with the culture of poor, rural western Maine.Chute's first, and best known, novel, The Beans of Egypt, Maine , and Dorothy Allison Dorothy Allison (born April 11, 1949) is an American writer, speaker, and member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers. She was raised in Greenville, South Carolina, the first child of her 15-year-old, unwed mother. She is legally blind in her right eye. havemuch in common with each other as well as with a number of other novelsabout working-class women. All have young female narrators, sexualabuse, rape, strong women, men both violent and charismatic, problematicmothers, and rural settings. All end with the young protagonists clearlyon the road to survival, having been saved by the intervention of astrong woman. All these novels, then, have similar thematic content, andeach novelist has chosen to express these themes through double-layereddiscourses that correspond to ideas of class position. Each moves in andout of dialects associated with working and middle classes. Walker andChute each use two narrators: a young protagonist (Celie and Earlene,respectively) who speaks in a working-class dialect specific to herregion, and a second narrator who speaks in a "correct"English (Nettie's letters, and Chute's omniscient om��nis��cient?adj.Having total knowledge; knowing everything: an omniscient deity; the omniscient narrator.n.1. One having total knowledge.2. Omniscient God. narrator).Allison, although using a single narrative voice, provides that narratorwith control over different dialects: Bone records characters'speech in a working-class dialect while her own speech is recorded as"standard."(5)It is the latter strategy that makes the consumption of the thematiccontent palatable to mainstream readers who might otherwise be put offby the despair of these lives. If the understanding of the term"working class" in American capitalism implies a desire forall things middle-class (income, neighborhood, occupation, education),then any narrative by working-class persons (who are in generalpartially marked as such by their "substandard" speech) inmiddle-class language is by [middle-class] definition, a successstory.(6) Shadows cast by sexual abuse, economic exploitation,psychological hopelessness can all be dispelled by the subtle butpowerful light of middle-class speech, which becomes a testament to theauthor's ability to transcend the limits of any singular discoursethat may be associated with limited life experiences. It is unlikelythat middle-class readers - again, assuming that most middle-classreaders read to be entertained, not confronted - would surrenderauthority to a writer whose life and work appear bound by classedoppression. Being limited by class may be more "unforgivable"than being so bound by race or gender because class, in America, issupposed to be fluid, changeable, escapable.Chief among American myths is that of upward class mobility, groundedin the possibility of individual achievement in an economic system thatwillingly rewards hard work. To see literary signs that suggestworking-class status may be a permanent condition is surely threateningto anyone who imagines herself and everyone around her to be a freeagent free to act and succeed, free from limits. So while each novel ispraised for the "authenticity" of the working-class voice,that authenticity is always circumscribed by a middle-class authorialvoice that is somehow represented as being above the fray, able to shiftback and forth between languages and experiences, able to validateworking-class experience while at the same time making it appear safelydistant from middle-class readers. This middle-class voice offers itselfas a guarantor of class mobility and of middle-class safety.How does the publishing industry articulate its claims ofauthenticity on behalf of its writers? Probably the clearest example ofthis process can be found by looking at the fate of Alice Walker as aninstitution unto herself after the wild success of The Color Purple. Inpraising the novel as "convincing because of the authenticity ofits folk voice" (Watkins), the New York New York, state, United StatesNew York,Middle Atlantic state of the United States. It is bordered by Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and the Atlantic Ocean (E), New Jersey and Pennsylvania (S), Lakes Erie and Ontario and the Canadian province of Times Book Review helpsestablish Walker as a writer in touch with "folk." There is nodanger of confusing Walker herself with the "folk" though,because of the dedication and epigraph ep��i��graph?n.1. An inscription, as on a statue or building.2. A motto or quotation, as at the beginning of a literary composition, setting forth a theme. to the novel, both of whichestablish an authorial voice whose range of speech is much broader thanher protagonist Celie's. This authorial range will be reemphasizedthrough the inclusion of Nettie's proper (if somewhat dull)letters. Walker's ability simultaneously to distance herself fromher characters (giving them lives apart from her own as she thanks themall for coming) and to allow herself to stand in for "thefolk" has made her not only popular, but also something of aone-woman institution who is called on to authenticate and vouch for vouch forverb 1. guarantee, back, certify, answer for, swear to, stick up for (informal) stand witness, give assurance of, asseverate, go bail forverb 2. thelives and work of white working-class women.This dynamic assumes an unexplored equation of race with class, ineffect collapsing differences between the two. Walker herself seems toencourage this collapse when, in her introduction to AgnesSmedley's Daughter of Earth for The Feminist Press, she makes thisessentializing observation in praise of Smedley's work:This acuteness of perception (similar to that which women experienceduring the monthly crisis of menstruation menstruation,periodic flow of blood and cells from the lining of the uterus in humans and most other primates, occurring about every 28 days in women. Menstruation commences at puberty (usually between age 10 and 17). , but sustained over dozens ofyears) is, I am convinced, one of the cruelest products of poverty, forit is in fact an indication of unrelieved pain, a sign of an extremelyloving and sensitive soul . . .being tortured to death. . . .Agnes Smedley was a poor white woman who, all her life, continued tothink, to act, to write like one. I recognize in her a matriot of my owncountry. (Foreword 2-4)Hers is certainly a loaded statement from its beginning that equatesmenstruation and poverty as sources of acuity, to its end that equatescountry with race, class and sex in the neologism A new word or new meaning for an existing word. The high-tech field routinely creates neologisms, especially new meanings. Years ago, there was no doubt that a "mouse" referred only to a furry, little rodent. "matriot."The point of all this analysis, however, is to articulate how raceinsofar as Walker's status as an institution is founded on herapparent position as the representative of all African-American women -comes to authorize class - insofar as white working-class womenwriters' work must be validated, proven authentic by one apparentlyin the know. Throughout this process, race becomes essentialized as itis collapsed with class. Because Walker apparently has a magicalconnection to the world of both folks and spirits, she becomes a kind ofyardstick for others' experiences with oppression.(7)If Walker's authentic working-class voice comes (at leastindirectly) from her inscription as a black woman in America, thenclaims for Carolyn Chute's authenticity are made by the press inlight of her lifestyle, apparently both fascinating and horrifying,particularly in its animalism. Each of the blurbs on the back of TheBeans of Egypt, Maine praises the novel by calling attention to somelevel of naturalism naturalism, in artnaturalism,in art, a tendency toward strict adherence to the physical appearance of nature and rejection of ideal forms. Artists as diverse as Velázquez, J. F. Millet, and Monet, have followed naturalistic principles. in Chute's life and work. Let me quote fromeach of the review blurbs:"[The Beans] are endlessly slamming doors, dropping food intheir beards, moaning, stomping, snorting and unzipping" (NYT NYT New York TimesNYT National Youth Theatre (UK)NYT New York Transit (New York, USA)NYT New York Tribune )"A story of America's rural underclass. . .an authentic,powerful voice from a natural writer" (Detroit News)"Brutal. . .blackly comic. . .spectacular,. . . Carolyn Chute isthe real McCoy. She has lived the life she writes about."(Newsday)Engrossing. . .with a unique kind of primitive power."(People)(all emphases added)What these quotes indicate is that the cultural value ascribed toChute lies in her supposedly fundamental - presumably pre��sum��a��ble?adj.That can be presumed or taken for granted; reasonable as a supposition: presumable causes of the disaster. autobiographical -connection to nature, particularly to animals and the primitive. Notonly are her characters animalistically preverbal pre��verb��al?adj.1. Preceding the verb.2. a. Having not yet learned to speak: preverbal children.b. (snorting, moaning andstomping), but Chute's own family is equated with animals in thefollowing sentence taken from a feature article that appeared in the NewYork Times at the peak of Chute's popularity. Describing those wholive in Chute's home, the reporter writes:There is a quizzical-looking dog, a pliant, brain-damaged cat, andfrequently, there have also been her daughter by her first marriage, herson-in-law and their baby. (Clendenen 13)In this patronizing description there is no distinction at allbetween family members and animals except that the animals appear to bemore constant and are more defined. In this and in other comments itbecomes clear that the media's exoticization of Chute's lifein Maine goes hand-in-hand with praise for her novel. In other words Adv. 1. in other words - otherwise stated; "in other words, we are broke"put differently ,she is "authentic" because, after all, how can animals beotherwise, but she is non-threatening because the worlds and languagesshe creates seem so far removed from human civilization - or, more tothe point, from middle-class living rooms. Thus her novel can be readsafely, for fun, voyeuristically with nothing at risk for middle-classreaders.The New York Times does have one reviewer, however, who was not ableto read the novel for fun, precisely because it is all too real for her.Bertha Harris Bertha Harris (December 17 1937 – May 22 2005) was an American lesbian novelist. Born in Fayetteville, North Carolina, she moved to New York City in the 1960s. She is highly regarded by critics and admirers, but her novels are less familiar to the broader public. pans the novel neither for its style nor language, but forits "relentlessly bleak vision" (7). Equating the omniscientnarrator with the author, Harris despairs of Earlene's condition:"The trouble," she writes, "is knowing what Mrs. Chutethinks." The second tier of language - the "standard"English of the omniscient narrator who Harris assumes is Chute herself -cannot act as a barrier to the suffering of the protagonist because itdoes not voice Harris's own values. Harris's response, then,is a fitting example of reader reaction to a novel where pain is notcontained but appears to seep beyond the text itself. For themiddle-class critic, art should be entertainment: if a narrativemanifests classed pain that cannot be confined within the borders of thetext, it must be a defective narrative - not art, but a statement ofmisquided morals. Anxiety about class is shifted onto discussions ofsexual transgressions. Chute responds at length to Harris's reviewin an interview in Breadloaf Quarterly, suggesting that Harris'sapparent obsession with the sex in the novel (which Harris reads asincestuous in��ces��tu��ousadj.1. Of, involving, or suggestive of incest.2. Having committed incest. ) is a result of class prejudice: "I think a lot ofpeople just assumed it was incest because these characters are poor. . ..I got really mad at those reviewers because they wereoutsiders"(Lesser 173).For both author and reviewer then, class position plays a central (ifsometimes implicit) part in the reading of a text: for each, theidentity of the other ("what Mrs. Chute thinks" or"reviewers [are] outsiders") must be known in order tounderstand the text. This accounts for the critical interest in theautobiographical quality of working-class writing. DorothyAllison's recent novel, Bastard out of Carolina - with a DorotheaLange photograph on its cover to suggest the novel's linguistic andexperiential realism - is surrounded by the same kind of conjectureabout the extent to which her story is autobiographical (as with Chuteand the Beans) but the issue is resolved much more quickly. The New YorkTimes's positive review is coupled with an inset that takes updirectly the question of autobiography - people simply want to know ifthese horrible but compelling stories of sexual abuse, poverty anddespair are actually true: is it really possible?(8) To which Allisonreplies "[F]iction is a lot easier [than memoirs]. You can build ina lot of hope that you don't have in real life." Allison iscredited with a kind of distance from her characters that Chute is not:the reviewer George Garrett praises Allison for resisting "thetemptation to turn characters into case studies. Too many readers andreviewers are relieved by that abstraction from the pain of feltexperience.... What saves [Allison] from all the possible pitfalls isthe living language she has created for Bone" (Garrett 3). Soagain, it is the idea that Allison is able to create a language that isrealistic but not her own that enables readers to respond positively toher as a writer. Garrett may note that other readers are relieved byabstraction, but his own celebration of the novel emphasizesAllison's creation of language; that is, he locates created,deliberate language as the proof of authorial control and distance.2. Exposing Difference: Materiality and Aesthetics in the Work ofSharon IsabellAnyone can fantasize a book, but to make a book, to type and print,to carry around all those tons of paper and shape them into a form whichis 8 x 10 and glued together, that is a different matter. That takes themachinery, muscle, material substance which is the other side of anidea. It is not an accident that workingclass women produced thematerial substance of this book, and that the stories say what they do.(Grahn 14)The book to which Grahn refers is the two-volume anthology ofworking-class women's writing, True to Life Adventure Stories(1978, 1981), the anthology in which Sharon Isabell's two shortstories appear. Grahn's editorial practices, as mentioned earlier,make Adventure Stories a fine place to help students see the "otherside of an idea." Valuing working-class writing demands thatreaders identified with middle-class interests understand that textswritten by working-class women writers may be, but are not necessarily,produced out of a different relationship to language insofar as they donot participate in "standard" English because of education orcommunity or personal choice. This body of writing may lack culturallysanctioned markers of authority such as control of several dialects;punctuation, spelling and grammar that are "correct" orstandard"; and the development of characters other than thenarrative voice. The question of intentionality intentionalityProperty of being directed toward an object. Intentionality is exhibited in various mental phenomena. Thus, if a person experiences an emotion toward an object, he has an intentional attitude toward it. on the part ofworking-class writers, in fact, runs just below the surface of thisessay: confronted with a text that bears few marks of culturalauthority, many students find themselves preoccupied with trying toprove whether or not Sharon Isabell's idiosyncratic id��i��o��syn��cra��sy?n. pl. id��i��o��syn��cra��sies1. A structural or behavioral characteristic peculiar to an individual or group.2. A physiological or temperamental peculiarity.3. spellings aredeliberate or accidental. Watching students react to Isabell's workmakes clear the tremendous emotional investment that many undergraduatereaders have in trusting the authors they encounter on the page. As astudent at Holy Cross wrote in a different context that speaks to thesame issue: "as a reader trusting of the author, I felt agitated ag��i��tate?v. ag��i��tat��ed, ag��i��tat��ing, ag��i��tatesv.tr.1. To cause to move with violence or sudden force.2. and betrayed by [him]. Throughout his 'stories' I agonized ag��o��nize?v. ag��o��nized, ag��o��niz��ing, ag��o��niz��esv.intr.1. To suffer extreme pain or great anguish.2. To make a great effort; struggle.v.tr. with him, laughed with him, and felt pain for him. Yet these emotionsseem unwarranted after finding that what he said was not even true.While as a writer I understand his reasoning, as a reader I am dismayedto find the stories as fallacies" (Penzarella). Part of my projecthere is to determine the extent to which these feelings of trust areshaped by the perceived class position of the writer.According to according toprep.1. As stated or indicated by; on the authority of: according to historians.2. In keeping with: according to instructions.3. her autobiography Yesterday's Lessons (1974),Sharon Isabell was born in Clear Lake Oaks, California, in 1942. In1945, the family moved so that her father could begin work in the Mt.Diablo ore mines while her mother kept house and raised five children.As early as first grade, Isabell experienced difficulty at schoolbecause of both her working-class background and her own sexuality. Asshe writes "I was really having a good time [on the playground]when these girls started laughing at me. 'Look at that dirty tomboy. Wait a minute. Is that a boy or a girl?'"(7).Marginalized throughout her school life, troubled by violence at home,and confused about her emergent lesbian identity, Isabell joined thearmy as soon as she turned 18. After her discharge a short time later(the head psychiatrist told her she "was not the type of personthat could adapt to military life and [her] rebellious attitude was veryunhealthy" (114-115), Isabell moved to Concord and then to Oakland,where she took night classes at Grove Street College (the subject of hershort story "Different Worlds").All three of Isabell's published pieces (Yesterday'sLessons, "Twenty Days," and "Different Worlds") likemuch working-class writing, are autobiographical - but clearly attentiveto the ways that the individual self is constructed out of and inresponse to social forces. Read together, Isabell's corpus (writtenbetween 1974 and 1981) traces the development of her consciousness ofthose social forces that shape each individual life. While "TwentyDays" may be the most dynamic of her stories, my emphasis in thisessay is a reading of "Different Worlds" because the storyspeaks directly to the connection between education and work. There areno linguistic markers to separate out or judge autobiographical events;few traditional marks of authorial control; no safeguards againstseeping pain; no way to determine that Isabell herself is not trapped inthe language she offers her readers. This makes her work particularlythreatening to middle-class readers who look for these kinds of markersas they read and judge texts, as we have seen in the responses of theNYTBR NYTBR New York Times Book Review reviewers. If Isabell's work is ever to reach a wideraudience, then, it must be an audience able to recognize the classbiases of their positions as readers, the most pervasive one being thedesire for proof that the writer in question could use"standard" English if she wanted to.(9) By performing a closereading of Isabell's short story "Different Worlds" Iwill suggest a working-class aesthetic that can value the way materialconditions impinge on formal expressions and representations rather thanjudging all texts as though they had middle-class authors whose relationto language and lived reality is similar to those of the middle-classaudience. Simply put, class matters in the way we read.To illustrate this as pointedly as possible, let me, before I read"Different Worlds," provide a brief overview of how studentsin a seminar at Brown University responded to Yesterdays' Lessons.Their responses make clear both the investment they had in traditionaltexts and the excitement they felt when they came to recognize - andsometimes to divest themselves of - those investments.The material presence of Yesterday's Lessons is different fromwhat students are accustomed to. It therefore forces them - immediately- to become acutely aware of the kind of academic or class-biasedexpectations and responses they have as readers of texts. Printed by TheWomen's Press Collective in California in the mid 1970s, the textappears to be typewritten type��write?intr. & tr.v. type��wrote , type��writ��ten , type��writ��ing, type��writesTo engage in writing or to write (matter) with a typewriter. rather than typeset. Students immediatelyrecognized their readerly investment in texts that "lookright": they are accustomed to books that are typeset withprofessional looking typeface The design of a set of printed characters, such as Courier, Helvetica and Times Roman. The terms "typeface" and "font" are used interchangeably, but the typeface is the primary design, while the font is the particular implementation and variation of the typeface, such as bold or italics and illustrated either with nothing orwith drawings or photographs. Isabell's text is illustrated withwood-block carvings of family photographs, most of which show family andfriends dutifully du��ti��ful?adj.1. Careful to fulfill obligations.2. Expressing or filled with a sense of obligation.du smiling in stark contrast to the pain of the livesIsabell portrays. The book has no authorizing or validating blurbs onit, no reviews, introductions, afterwords, or prefaces. Without familiartextual apparati to guide them, students are forced to consider howaesthetics are related to, if not determined by, access to money - tobig presses, important publishers, glossy paper, validating academics.Students quickly became aware that these material realities help shapetheir responses to texts; they can see ways in which they automaticallygrant authority to certain texts even before they sit down and read.Once they began to read, however, they became aware of other basesthey use, by now automatically, to authorize certain texts.Yesterday's Lessons does not participate in, at any level,standard, academic English: words are spelled inconsistently, grammar iserratic, transitions are not easily discernible. And there is absolutelyno sign that Sharon Isabell could "do better" if she wantedto; there are no markers that she is anything but trapped within aworking-class dialect, no sense that she could, even if she wanted to,shift back and forth between "standard" and"non-standard" English. Students tried to discern why or howwe knew that she was using, in a sense, the only voice she had bycomparing it to The Color Purple, where we know that Celie is differentfrom Alice Walker, and from The Girl, where we also know that the Girlis not Meridel LeSueur, even if she is at least partiallyautobiographical. The clearest way to think through these issues is toconsider The Adventures of Huckleberry huckleberry,any plant of the genus Gaylussacia, shrubs of the family Ericaceae (heath family), native to North and South America. The box huckleberry (G. brachycera) of E North America is evergreen and is often cultivated. The common huckleberry (G. Finn. While there is, apparently,no voice other than Huck's, at first glance no trustworthymiddle-class narrator, Samuel Clemens in fact asserts Twain'smiddle-class, adult voice in the introductory note and in theexplanatory. Together these authorial notes - as well as theauthor's already-established reputation - erect a middle-classframework for entering the world of Huck's own language.It became clear in reading Isabell how invested we all are, despiteourselves, in an author's intentionality precisely because it isalmost impossible to judge how thoroughly Isabell controls the text, notonly on a material level, but on a rhetorical one as well. At thesentence level, for example, students found this quandary: "Thisclub [the Junior Statesman Club] meant more to me than anything, justthink of me Sharon Isabell apart of freedom and justice for all"and, in the next paragraph, "Could you believe me and Helen at aball in the Sentor hotel in Sacromento, and apart of the congress of theUnited States Congress of the United States,the legislative branch of the federal government, instituted (1789) by Article 1 of the Constitution of the United States, which prescribes its membership and defines its powers. of America?"(my emphasis). Here we have two uses of"a/part," one, the latter, used "correctly" to meanthat she feels herself to be a connected fragment but the former usedmore ambiguously, since the spelling of "apart" indicatesdistance from rather than the connection she is perhaps seeking, butbecause she never finds or sustains connectedness with anything (leastof all with the US government), the graphic representation "apartof" suggests a joyously loaded reading.In her short story "Different Worlds" (1978) Isabell'sarticulation of the position of otherness oth��er��ness?n.The quality or condition of being other or different, especially if exotic or strange: "We're going to see in Europe ... and its relation to geographicspace is intensified by the sheer number of different worlds representedin the text. Her struggle to understand the world in terms of class andsexual identity is now complicated by her new observations of thecentrality of academic and racial stratifications as well, as Sharonbegins to attend a community college and to work in a liquor store in aworking-class African-American neighborhood. The different worlds shetries - but fails - to inhabit simultaneously return us to the issuethat began this essay. To what extent is class bias inscribed inacademic discourse and in academic reception of working-class writers?And what can we do as teachers to begin to disrupt that discourse fromwithin the institution that produces it?Living as a lesbian, working as a liquor store cashier in aworking-class African-American section of Oakland, attending collegepart time, Isabell is constantly in spaces that allow her to observe theconstruction (and the deconstruction) of difference. Sharon begins torealize that the racial, sexual, economic, and academic boundaries shecrosses on a daily basis are in fact meant to divide society. The verypresence of her writing signals her commitment to exposing andcritiquing bourgeois ideologies even when living out that commitment (ifnot writing about it) is fraught with danger.She describes her first days on the job:I began to notice that people looked at me strange. By the third dayI had figured out what it was. I was somewhere I wasn't suppose tobe. One night a woman yelled at me, "Whatsa matter couldn'tyou make it in your own neighborhood?" The Black people didn'tlike a white person working in there [sic] store and the white peoplethat came in didn't think much of a white woman that worked in aBlack store. The air felt thick with unsaid thoughts and bad feelings. Iwished I could yell out I need this job, why does it have to be likethis. (54)Moving from one racially defined space to another, Sharon isconfronted by people who see the world divided by racial differencewhile she herself sees how classed exploitation binds them alltogether.(10)But finally, class-consciousness is articulated as the singular mostsignificant means of overcoming the oppressive dichotomies she has spenta lifetime observing. The power that academic discourse has in shapingpeople's ideas and experiences is made clear by the fact thatIsabell sees and articulates class division most pointedly once shearrives at the community college. Sharon describes Grove Street Collegeas a "strange, wonderful place" because it is like "reallife" in the ways it admits people of different class. But herhappiness at discovering an institution that admits difference does notblind her to the ways in which difference continues to be constructedhierarchically. Confused by the grammatically perfect speech of themiddle-class students, Sharon remains silent in her classes, even thoughshe sees what others cannot:College was explaining to me why poor people have to stay poor andwhy uneducated people have to stay uneducated. The less people at thetop the more they get and keep. They keep us fighting over pennies whilethey put hundred dollar bills in their pockets and call us low classpeople. Thats what I'd learned from liveing and now I was learningthe big words for it; Dehumanization de��hu��man��ize?tr.v. de��hu��man��ized, de��hu��man��iz��ing, de��hu��man��iz��es1. To deprive of human qualities such as individuality, compassion, or civility: , Alienation, Oppression, Raceism,Sexism, Classism class��ism?n.Bias based on social or economic class.classist adj. & n. , there are hundreds of words.I was getting very angry. When I went to work at the store the wordsjumped from pages of print into the faces of real live people.... Handsthat were colored like the rainbow and scarred like the mountains.Bodies bent in all kinds of shapes but carrying the same heavy loads.What good are words, if they're just words? I guess you have tolive before you can understand anything. (60)Words divorce meaning and people suffer. Aesthetic forms distortexperience until working-class lives become unrecognizable, unnamable.Sharon Isabell, among the boldest of women writers who compose thetradition of white working-class texts in the United States United States,officially United States of America, republic (2005 est. pop. 295,734,000), 3,539,227 sq mi (9,166,598 sq km), North America. The United States is the world's third largest country in population and the fourth largest country in area. , hasrecorded the intersections of classism, racism, sexism and heterosexism heterosexismPsychology The belief that heterosexual activities and institutions are better than those with a genderless or homosexual orientation. See Homophobia. that have charted her life and the lives of us all. By exposing theassumptions that sustain middle-class ideology and its literaryaesthetic, these women writers ask us to identify our own interests inthe American myths that beg conformity and distrust difference.3. Conclusion: Seeing Class Beyond the ClassroomWhat good are words, if they're just words? While SharonIsabell's answer to her own rhetorical question rhetorical questionn.A question to which no answer is expected, often used for rhetorical effect.rhetorical questionNoun would probably be"not much," it is her own writing that reveals therelationship between words and materiality (and language and action) inways that are immediately relevant to undergraduates who are themselvesstruggling with learning a new academic discourse that is all too oftenalienating and intimidating. Reading Isabell (and coming, after somethought, to really like her life-stories, as most students do) places acertain stress on students because it makes them aware of their ownclass positions, as well as on the class-inflected policies of theircollege or university. I can make no larger claim for reading thismaterial than to hope that seeing class differences operate in theliterary realm can encourage students to develop and extend theirreading strategies beyond the classroom. To have realized that usinglanguage a certain way takes education, that making books requiresmoney, that achieving critical acclaim demands a very specific set ofcircumstances involving all of the above can provide students with a newcritical perspective from which to see their culture at work.(11)ENDNOTES1 My definition of working-class is clearly aligned with the oneLauter articulates.2 For further discussions of the relationship between education andcapitalism, see Althusser 132-133; Tokarczyk and Fay, and Soley.3 For further elaborations of the history of the class as ananalytical concept, see Dimock and Gilmore 1-11.4 For work on the 1930s that privileges working-class perspectives,see Nelson, Foley, Rabinowitz, and Rabinowitz and Nekola. Except forNelson's work (on poetry) these works focus almost exclusively onthe writing of white men and women of the Left.5 For other examples of novels that use double layers of discourse toexpress working-class lives, see Tillie Olsen's Yonnondio, AgnesSmedley's Daughter of Earth, Meridel LeSueur's The Girl, ToniMorrison's The Bluest Eye, Sandra Cisneros's House on MangoStreet. Morrison makes particular use of the strategy of double layersof discourse in The Bluest Eye, and that novel could profitably bediscussed alongside the others in this article. I have not included itin this essay simply because it was never as publicly acclaimed as theothers that contexualize Isabell.6 Let me be clear that I do not agree with this text-book definition:there is ample evidence that the middle-class standard is not alwaysperceived by working class persons to be a desirable goal. See, forexamples, Sennett and Cobb, Gamson, and collections of creative writinglike Judy Grahn's (in which Isabell's stories appear).7 Walker's authorization of Smedley (and Olsen) is particularlyironic given the lack of scholarly critical attention given to thecentrality of class in Walker's own fiction; critics read The ColorPurple and other texts for sexual identities, for racial dynamics, forpoetic voice, for alleged man-hating but almost never for classoppression or the transformative power of profitable work. My ownreading of The Color Purple suggests that it is neither sexuality norrace pride that changes Celie from a disempowered to an empoweredperson, but rather the very material success of her Folkspants business(213, 221, 222). The Color Purple should be made available formaterialist readings that suggest the centrality if not the primacy ofclass. Jean Wyatt's chapter on TCP (1) (Transmission Control Protocol) The reliable transport protocol within the TCP/IP protocol suite. TCP ensures that all data arrive accurately and 100% intact at the other end. suggests the importantrelationship between creative work and "libidinal bonds" (164)in forging a strong extended family, but does not focus on the material,classed aspect of Celie's business.8 I once heard James Baldwin Noun 1. James Baldwin - United States author who was an outspoken critic of racism (1924-1987)Baldwin, James Arthur Baldwin say that white America demands thatblack America suffer so that white America won't have to: as longas somebody else is doing the suffering and the despairing, then Iwon't have to. This may be why we love fiction: other people can doall the suffering but since they're not real, the suffering'sprobably made up too.9 I feel strongly that this question is irresolvable in regard toIsabell and I wish I could make it irrelevant as well.10 Class exploitation does, however, work in specific ways forafrican-Americans. (see West). The point needs to be made thatultimately Sharon will quit her job after she is robbed and threatenedat gunpoint: although she has no resources, no job, she is nonethelessable to remove herself from danger in ways that those who live in theneighborhood probably cannot.(11) I would like to thank Susan Lanser forintroducing me to the work of Sharon Isabell, and Thadious Davis, RobertScholes Robert E. Scholes is an American literary critic and theorist. He is known for his ideas on fabulation and metafiction.He graduated from Yale University. 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