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Author
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Description
"Vance, a former marine and Yale Law School graduate, provides an account of growing up in a poor Rust Belt town that offers a broader, probing look at the struggles of America's white working class. The decline of this group, a demographic of our country that has been slowly disintegrating over forty years, has been reported on with growing frequency and alarm. J. D. Vance tells the true story of what a social, regional, and class decline feels like...
2) Empire Falls
Author
Accelerated Reader
IL: UG - BL: 7.4 - AR Pts: 34
Appears on these lists
Description
There is a protagonist: forty-something Miles Roby, proprietor of the local greasy spoon and the recently divorced father of a teenage daughter. We meet his ex-wife Janine, his father Max, and a host of Empire Grill regulars. To further complicate things, Miles's brother, David, is suspected of dealing marijuana.
Author
Formats
Description
"In this radiant, highly anticipated debut, a cast of unforgettable women battle for independence while a maelstrom of change threatens their Jamaican village. Capturing the distinct rhythms of Jamaican life and dialect, Nicole Dennis- Benn pens a tender hymn to a world hidden among pristine beaches and the wide expanse of turquoise seas. At an opulent resort in Montego Bay, Margot hustles to send her younger sister, Thandi, to school. Taught as a...
Author
Formats
Description
In this book, Nancy Isenberg reveals that the wretched and landless poor have existed from the time of the earliest British colonial settlements to today's hillbillies. Poor whites were central to the rise of the Republican Party in the early nineteenth century and the Civil War itself was fought over class issues nearly as much as it was fought over slavery. Reconstruction pitted white trash against newly freed slaves, which factored in the rise...
5) Martin Eden
Author
Description
Recounts the story of Martin Eden, a young seaman struggling to obtain social and intellectual recognition as a writer.
6) The jungle
Author
Series
Accelerated Reader
IL: UG - BL: 8 - AR Pts: 22
Appears on list
Formats
Description
A documentary novel portraying industry's conditions at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century. Sinclair's novel prompted public outrage which led President Theodore Roosevelt to demand an official investigation. This eventually led to the passage of the Pure Food and Drug laws.
Author
Description
With stark poignancy and political dispassion, Tightrope draws us deep into an "other America." The authors tell this story, in part, through the lives of some of the children with whom Kristof grew up, in rural Yamhill, Oregon, an area that prospered for much of the twentieth century but has been devastated in the last few decades as blue-collar jobs disappeared. About one-quarter of the children on Kristof's old school bus died in adulthood from...
Author
Accelerated Reader
IL: UG - BL: 6.4 - AR Pts: 20
Description
A haunting memoir about growing up dirt-poor in the Alabama hills--and about moving on but never really being able to leave. The extraordinary gifts for evocation and insight and the stunning talent for story- telling that earned Rick Bragg a Pulitzer Prize for feature writing in 1996 are here brought to bear on the wrenching story of his own family's life. It is the story of a war-haunted, hard-drinking father and a strong-willed, loving mother who...
Author
Pub. Date
c1998
Description
The Valley of the Moon (1913) is a novel by American writer Jack London. Inspired by his experiences as a working-class man and dedicated socialist, London incorporates aspects of his own biography-his interest in sailing, his life on a ranch in Sonoma County-to tell a story of hardship, hope, and perseverance. Having grown disillusioned with the labor movement, London uses the novel to advocate for sustainable agriculture and other alternatives to...
11) Sons and lovers
Author
Description
"D.H. Lawrence's most widely read novel and one of the great works of twentieth-century literature, Sons and Lovers is now printed in full for the first time. In 1913, at the time of its first publication, Lawrence reluctantly agreed to the removal of no fewer than eighty passages which until now have never been restored. Here at last is the novel in the form that Lawrence himself wanted - a tenth longer than the incomplete and expurgated version...
12) Shuggie Bain
Author
Formats
Description
"Shuggie Bain is the unforgettable story of young Hugh "Shuggie" Bain, a sweet and lonely boy who spends his 1980s childhood in public housing in Glasgow, Scotland. Thatcher's war on heavy industry has put husbands and sons out of work, and the city's notorious drugs epidemic is waiting in the wings. Shuggie's mother Agnes walks a wayward path: she is Shuggie's guiding light but a burden for his artistic brother and practical sister. She dreams of...
Author
Description
"Orphans Gig and Rye Dolan don't have a penny to their names. The brothers work grueling, odd jobs each day just to secure a meal, and spend nights sleeping wherever they can with other day laborers. Twenty-three-year-old Gig is a passionate union man, fighting for fair pay and calling out the corrupt employers who exploit the working class. Eager to emulate his older brother, Rye follows suit, though he can't quite muster Gig's passion for the cause....
Pub. Date
[2014]
Description
Based on the extensive historical archive of Quarry Bank Mill in Cheshire and portraying the lives of real people, this powerful scripted drama series depicts Britain at a time when the industrial revolution is changing the country beyond recognition. In the 1830s, children as young as nine work twelve-hour shifts in the mills, and the new class of mill-owning families prosper. But the so-called 'white slaves of England' are about to take their lives...
Author
Pub. Date
[2018]
Appears on list
Description
Spanning more than two hundred years, An African American and Latinx History of the United States is a revolutionary, politically charged narrative history arguing that the “Global South” was crucial to the development of America as we know it. Ortiz challenges the notion of westward progress, as exalted by widely taught formulations such as “manifest destiny” and “Jacksonian democracy,” and shows how placing African American, Latinx,...
18) Class: a memoir
Author
Pub. Date
2023.
Description
"Class paints an intimate and heartbreaking portrait of motherhood as it converges and often conflicts with personal desire and professional ambition. Who has the right to create art? Who has the right to go to college? And what kind of work is valued in our culture? In clear, candid, and moving prose, Class grapples with these questions, offering a searing indictment of America's educational system and an inspiring testimony of a mother's triumph...
19) Below stairs: the classic kitchen maid's memoir that insired Upstairs, Downstairs and Downton Abbey
Author
Pub. Date
2012.
Description
This work is a kitchen-maid's through-the-key hole memoir of life in the great houses of England. At fifteen, she arrived at the servants' entrance to begin her life as a kitchen maid in 1920s England. The lowest of the low, her world was one of stoves to be blacked, vegetables to be scrubbed, mistresses to be appeased, and even bootlaces to be ironed. Work started at 5:30 am and went on until after dark. In this memoir, the author tells her tales...
20) The short and tragic life of Robert Peace: a brilliant young man who left Newark for the Ivy League
Author
Pub. Date
c2014.
Description
A biography of a young African-American man who escaped the slums of Newark for Yale University only to succumb to the dangers of the streets when he returned home.
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