Poor Things

How Those with Money Depict Those without It

Lennard J. Davis (Autor)

Buch | Softcover

304 Seiten

2024
Duke University Press (Verlag)
978-1-4780-3102-4 (ISBN)

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Lennard J. Davis critiques literature written by the middle and upper classes that depict the poor through harmful stereotypes and argues that writers who were once poor are best positioned to write about the lived experience of poverty.

For generations most of the canonical works that detail the lives of poor people have been created by rich or middle-class writers like Charles Dickens, John Steinbeck, or James Agee. This has resulted in overwhelming depictions of poor people as living abject, violent lives in filthy and degrading conditions. In Poor Things, Lennard J. Davis labels this genre “poornography”: distorted narratives of poverty written by and for the middle and upper classes. Davis shows how poornography creates harmful and dangerous stereotypes that build barriers to social justice and change. To remedy this, Davis argues, poor people should write realistic depictions of themselves, but because of representational inequality they cannot. Given the obstacles to the poor accessing the means of publication, Davis suggests that the work should, at least for now, be done by “transclass” writers who were once poor and who can accurately represent poverty without relying on stereotypes and clichés. Only then can the lived experience of poverty be more fully realized.

Lennard J. Davis is Distinguished Professor of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University of Illinois Chicago and the author of many books, including Enabling Acts: The Hidden Story of How the Americans with Disabilities Act Gave the Largest US Minority Its Rights.

Preface. What It’s All About? ix
Introduction. Scenes from a Life and from Lives 1
Interchapter 1. Why Me? 21
1. How to Read This Book and How the Lives of the Poor Have Been Read, or Why You? 25
2. The Problem of Representing the Poor 42
3. Transclass: Endo- and Exo-writers 70
4. Biocultural Myths of the Poor Body 110
5. Female Sex Workers 153
6. The Encounter, or, the Object Talks Back 170
Interchapter 2. They Got It Right Now? 205
Conclusion. What Is to Be Done? Endings and Beginnings 219
Notes 231
Bibliography 253
Index

Erscheinungsdatum	25.09.2024
Zusatzinfo	34 illustrations
Verlagsort	North Carolina
Sprache	englisch
Maße	152 x 229 mm
Gewicht	431 g
Themenwelt	Kunst / Musik / Theater
	Geisteswissenschaften ► Sprach- / Literaturwissenschaft ► Anglistik / Amerikanistik
	Geisteswissenschaften ► Sprach- / Literaturwissenschaft ► Literaturwissenschaft
ISBN-10	1-4780-3102-6 / 1478031026
ISBN-13	978-1-4780-3102-4 / 9781478031024
Zustand	Neuware