Kaye Gibbons: Tough Women in a Rough South

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rebecca Godwin
Keyword(s):  
North Carolina ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Lower Class ◽  
Foster Home ◽  
Her Family ◽  
Sleeping Pills ◽  
Farming Community ◽  
Written Word

This chapter discusses Kaye Gibbons's work, which portrays wise and hardworking women whose gumption improves the lot of the suffering lower class. Born Bertha Kaye Batts on May 5, 1960, Kaye Gibbons grew up in a Nash County, North Carolina, farming community named Bend of the River. When Gibbons was ten, her mother committed suicide by overdosing on sleeping pills; her father drank himself to death soon thereafter. Orphaned at age twelve, Gibbons lived briefly with an aunt and then in a foster home, before moving in with her married older brother. Gibbons learned early to love the written word, a key to her survival. Her first novel, Ellen Foster, was published in 1987, and its sequel, The Life All Around Me by Ellen Foster, in 2006. Gibbons's second novel, A Virtuous Woman (1989), features a character whose inner conflict highlights the tension between the Rough South and the working-class South her family represents. Gibbons's other novels include A Cure for Dreams (1991) and Charms for the Easy Life (1993).

The Rough South of Ron Rash

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Ærvold Bjerre
Keyword(s):  
South Carolina ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Family Background ◽  
Lower Class ◽  
White Trash ◽  
Poor Whites ◽  
The People ◽  
Almost All ◽  
Violent Conflicts ◽  
North And South

This chapter discusses the fiction of Ron Rash, who sets almost all of his work—poems, short stories, and novels—in the Carolinas and focuses on the people who live or have lived there. Rash was born in Chester, South Carolina, in 1953, and grew up in Boiling Springs, North Carolina. While not a direct heir to the “Southern Redneck and White Trash” tradition, Rash fills his work with characters firmly embedded in the Rough South—mostly lower-class whites from Appalachian North and South Carolina. Rash's work illustrates his concern with working-class characters and their struggles, with poor whites and their violent conflicts. His interest in the working class reflects his own family background. Rash published his first collection of poetry, Eureka Mill, in 1998. He also wrote novels that depict violence, such as One Foot in Eden, The World Made Straight, and Serena.

scholarly journals Gods, Gurus, Prophets and the Poor: Exploring Informal, Interfaith Exchanges among Working Class Female Workers in an Indian City

Religions ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (9) ◽  
pp. 531
Author(s):  
Atreyee Sen
Keyword(s):  
Working Class ◽  
Lower Class ◽  
Vital Role ◽  
Male Dominance ◽  
Migrant Women ◽  
Religious Traditions ◽  
Urban Workers ◽  
Indian City ◽  
The Face ◽  
Working Class Women

This article revolves around the narratives of Sabita (Muslim), Radha (Hindu) and Sharleen (Christian), migrant women in their mid-forties, who have been working as maids, cooks and cleaners in middle-class housing colonies in Kolkata, a city in eastern India. Informal understandings of gendered oppressions across religious traditions often dominate the conversations of the three working-class women. Like many labourers from slums and lower-class neighbourhoods, they meet and debate religious concerns in informal ‘resting places’ (under a tree, on a park bench, at a tea stall, on a train, at a corner of a railway platform). These anonymous spaces are usually devoid of religious symbols, as well as any moral surveillance of women’s colloquial abuse of male dominance in society. I show how the anecdotes of struggle, culled across multiple religious practices, intersect with the shared existential realities of these urban workers. They temporarily empower female members of the informal workforce in the city, to create loosely defined gendered solidarities in the face of patriarchal authority, and reflect on daily discrimination against economically marginalised migrant women. I argue that these fleeting urban rituals underline the more vital role of (what I describe as) poor people’s ‘casual philosophies’, in enhancing empathy and dialogue between communities that are characterised by political tensions in India.

Upper Class Bias and Class Conflict in America

The Forum ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher Witko
Keyword(s):  
Working Class ◽  
Political Science ◽  
American Politics ◽  
Science Studies ◽  
Economic Inequality ◽  
Lower Class ◽  
Political Mobilization ◽  
Class Conflict ◽  
Upper Class ◽  
Class Bias

AbstractCompared to other affluent democracies, class conflict has not been very intense nor as much of an organizing principle in American politics. However, as wages stagnate for the working class and economic inequality grows, class conflict is becoming increasingly salient. Yet, reviewing recent political science studies, I argue that rather than politics becoming a clearer class “war” between the upper and lower classes, the growing class bias in political mobilization and participation, and the resulting overrepresentation of upper class actors, has prevented a clear articulation of lower class interests

Twenty-First-Century Writers: The Rural Southern Tradition Continues

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jean W. Cash
Keyword(s):  
Secondary Education ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Rural Families ◽  
Lower Class ◽  
First Century ◽  
Southern Writers ◽  
Post Secondary ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
Universal Themes

This chapter focuses on twenty-first-century writers who carry on the rural southern tradition in their work. Since 2000, several young southern writers, nearly all born after 1975 and from middle-class rural and lower-class backgrounds, have begun to publish fiction. Both portraying the areas where they were born and grew up and transcending those settings to address more universal themes, they have produced a significant body of praiseworthy work. Most were born into rural families but received the benefits of post-secondary education, but all seem committed to presenting the working-class South with realism and empathy. Among these new novelists are Joe Samuel Starnes, Peter Farris, John Brandon, Wiley Cash, Skip Horack, Barb Johnson, Michael Farris Smith, and Jesmyn Ward. Clearly, novels that address southern characters in southern scenes will continue to be written, whether of the Rough South variety from writers like Johnson or from writers like Ward, Horack, Brandon, Cash, and Smith.

Prologue

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-9
Author(s):  
David Menconi
Keyword(s):  
North Carolina ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Folk Music ◽  
Musical History

This sets the scene for the story of North Carolina music, with the author’s introduction to the state’s music via the 1952 compilation “Anthology of American Folk Music.” Through vignettes and interviews with an array of figures, historical as well as contemporary, it sets the stage for a narrative of musical history with a through-line of underdog working-class populism. Old-time legend Alice Gerrard, Piedmont blues guitarist Etta Baker, pianist Ben Folds, Kruger Brothers Uwe Kruger, and Hiss Golden Messenger leader M.C. Taylor all figure prominently.

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