Includes bibliographical references and index.

List of Figures and Tables -- Notes on Contributors -- Introduction: Defining and Defying Common (Mis)Understandings of the Working Class -- Jennifer Beech and Matthew Wayne Guy -- PART 1: Memoirs and Personal Essays -- 1 Social Class and Sociolects -- Irvin Peckham -- 2 Becoming "Gente Educada": Navigating Academia as a Working-Class, Multiply-Marginalized Student -- Christina V. Cedillo -- 3 Rhetoric: From a Community Yet to Arrive -- José Manuel Cortez -- 4 Five Miles and a World Away: A Memoir -- Edward J. Whitelock -- 5 Feeling Like an Imposter at College -- Nancy Mack -- 6 (Un)Belonging in Liminality: Garage Stories -- Phil Bratta -- 7 Book Smart AND Street Smart -- Valerie Murrenus Pilmaier -- 8 "Remember the Spartans" -- William Thelin -- 9 Honest Work -- Katherine Highfill -- PART 2: Critical Essays -- 10 Bodies in the World of Labor: Class, Affect, and Rhetoric in IWW's "What is What in the World of Labor?" Poster -- Phil Bratta -- 11 Mind on Heaven: Working-Class Rhetorics in Serpent-Handling Rituals of Southern Appalachia -- Heather Palmer -- 12 White Bread as a Working-Class Symbol -- Kelli R. Gill -- 13 "Put Some Flowers in the Graveyard": The Gloomy Fate of the Working Class in George A. Romero's Land of the Dead -- Philip L. Simpson -- 14 Working Class on the Small Screen -- Sarah Attfield -- 15 #ActorsWithDayJobs: Geoffrey Owens, Job Shaming, and the Ideology of Work -- William DeGenaro -- 16 (Literal) Self-Exposure: Celebrity "Activism" during Covid-19 -- Abby Graves -- 17 Returning to Van Buren Street: A Photographic Essay -- David Engen -- Index.

As the recent pandemic illustrated, many folks are only one or two paychecks away from bankruptcy. The economic disparities made starkly clear in the wake of shutdowns have brought home the need for thinking critically about class in ways that many U.S. citizens have traditionally resisted. This collection of memoirs and cultural analyses by established and newer scholars from a variety of disciplines seeks to reintroduce class in sophisticated, yet accessible, ways so that students may increase their critical literacy and consider the power of rhetoric to fight for equitable distribution of income and class power. Contributors are: : Sarah Attfield, Jennifer Beech, Phil Bratta, Ryan Cooper Carl, Christina V. Cedillo, José M. Cortez, William DeGenaro, David Engen, Kelli R. Gill, Abby Graves, Matthew Wayne Guy, Katherine Highfill, Nancy Mack, Heather Palmer, Irvin Peckham, Valerie Murrenus Pilmaier, Philip L. Simpson, William Thelin and Edward J. Whitelock.

Description based on print version record.