“A Whitegirl Helped Me”: Locating Poor Whites in Literature

This chapter interrogates the definitions of Grit Lit and Rough South and moves away from both categories to consider, via Raymond Williams and David Harvey, amongst others, the structures of feeling that emerge in contemporary southern literature to reveal the wider shift to liquidity in the form of financial capital and its socio-economic ramifications on poor whites. The chapter focuses on works by Toni Morrison, John Biguenet, Colson Whitehead, Barbara Kingsolver, and Tim McLaurin, and explores the ways these writers represent the impact of various political, economic and environmental changes and disasters including Reaganomics, Hurricane Katrina, and the 2008 financial crisis. It considers communalism and the alternatives that appear in these literary works for measuring time and worth beyond monetary values.

Conclusion

The conclusion underscores the book’s interest in neoliberalism or financial capitalism and reflects on the ways contemporary literary texts represent the realities of poverty. It engages with the idea of oppositional literature that challenges not merely stereotypical accounts of the poor but proposes alternatives to the neoliberal consensus, often in terms of communalism or communitarianism. It argues for the relevance of the humanities in political debates and the need to locate poverty within socio-economic policies rather than regional contexts and behaviors.

“What I Am Here for Is to Claim My Life”: Life-Writing and Reclaiming the Poor White Self

This chapters examines the work of several poor white life-writers, including Jeanette Walls, Dorothy Allison, Rick Bragg and Barbara Robinette Moss. It raises questions about nostalgia, romanticization, and neo-agrarianism as it critically interrogates ideas of the southern community and regional foodways. Through new historicist and postcolonial lenses, it argues that these works often share a counter-historical approach as they seek to talk back against dominant misperceptions about lives shaped by poverty. As it considers representations of welfare and war, it turns to J.D. Vance’s bestselling Hillbilly Elegy to critically interrogate its neoliberal agenda and its place within the poor white sub-genre of life-writing.

Photo-Narratives and the Poor White Self since the FSA

After briefly outlining the work of the Farm Security Administration (FSA) photographers and writers during the Great Depression, the chapter turns to rephotography projects, namely that of Dale Maharidge and Michael Williamson, to explore the FSA’s legacy. The chapter interrogates the relationship and tension between aesthetics and activism as it examines several contemporary photo-narratives focused on Appalachia. In addition to critically discussing the work of Appalshop, it questions the representation of the poor in photo-narratives by, amongst others, Shelby Lee Adams, Tim Barnwell and Susan Lipper. The chapter focuses on questions of counter-visuality as it presents contemporary life-writing by writers such as Dorothy Allison, Rick Bragg, Barbara Robinette Moss and Janisse Ray, as a vehicle for producing counter-visual legacies.