From “trailer trash” to “the one percent,” the language of class tends to evoke divisions both stark and simplistic. It’s easy to discern the outward differences between a single mother living in squalor and a socialite in her Park Avenue penthouse. But the lived experience of class takes place on far more fractured terrain. The way we understand our own class—and determine the class of others—is as much about yesterday’s legacy as today’s money, as much about perception as reality.
In this special issue of Guernica, the second of four made possible through your generous support to our Kickstarter campaign, we offer stories beyond the sleeping beast that is the Occupy Movement. As with our previous themed issues, we hope to start conversations, not end them, exploring how class lives in our minds and manifests in imperceptible and unexpected ways. Class lines are fault lines: politically fraught and personally subjective, actual and imagined.
In her essay “Scenes from a Life in Negroland,” Margo Jefferson meditates on the interplay between societal appearances and class as she recalls being “comfortable” and black as a child in 1950s Chicago: “We thought of ourselves as the Third Race, poised between the masses of Negroes and all classes of Caucasians.” And Luis Alberto Urrea reflects on his own experience as a “white Mexican,” considering the complex relationship between race, class, and immigration, and the way in which class is often an exercise in image-making.
While occupation frequently serves as a marker for class, what does it mean when college professors—presumed members of the “professional class”—are living in near-poverty? As Guernica’s Rachel Riederer writes, “Teaching college is no longer a middle class job,” due to American universities’ reliance on adjuncts: highly educated instructors paid meagerly per course and rarely given benefits or a semblance of job security.
In 2008, Huntington, West Virginia, received the ignominious distinction of being declared the unhealthiest city in America, and soon it was the subject of a reality TV show aimed at transforming its food habits. Guernica’s Meara Sharma speaks with food writers Jane Black and Brent Cunningham, who moved to Huntington after the cameras left to witness an unlikely conversation about food reform unfolding in the primarily working-class, white community, and explore how the food movement might resonate beyond affluent urbanites.
As the food movement is often branded elitist, the environmental movement tends to be labeled exclusive: populations most affected by pollution and environmental degradation aren’t involved in decision-making. Guernica’s Katherine Rowland interviews Robert Bullard, the “father of environmental justice,” who sheds light on what he calls the “energy apartheid,” and how poor neighborhoods often bear the brunt of urban waste.
And Guernica’s Hillary Brenhouse talks to Cristina Ibarra about her documentary film Las Marthas, which follows debutante teens on the US-Mexico border as they celebrate America’s founding fathers in an annual, elaborate colonial ball, countering the pervasive border-town narrative of poverty and drug cartel violence.
Guernica’s Alex Zafiris interviews Milton Glaser, the celebrated graphic designer and creator of the I (heart) NY logo, about the aesthetics of class and why “art is work.” Plus, new fiction by Tracey Rose Peyton and Tracy O’Neill, poetry by Tommy Pico and Abigail Carl-Klassen, and pieces on the new debtors’ prisons, end-of-life choices, and more.
Margo Jefferson: Scenes From a Life in Negroland
Luis Alberto Urrea: Ghosts in the Land of Plenty
Rachel Riederer: The Teaching Class
Ann Neumann: How the Other Half Dies
Jessica Pishko: The Price of Freedom
Lauren Quinn: Which Side Are You On, Girl?
Interviews:
Servings of Small Change: Meara Sharma interviews Jane Black and Brent Cunningham
Going Through Customs: Hillary Brenhouse interviews Cristina Ibarra
Talking Clean and Acting Dirty: Katherine Rowland interviews Robert Bullard
Art:
Fiction:
Tracy O’Neill: Who Can Shave Thirteen Times a Day
Tracey Rose Peyton: More Than This
Poetry:
