Nicholas Coles

A History of American Working-Class Literature

The chapter is a discussion of two competing traditions in American Working-Class life writing, what I call the ethnographic tradition (which sees working-class life in terms of the Boasian concept of culture) and a performative tradition (defined as a writing back against the classificatory practices of instutionalised social science. It also comprises a close-reading of the work of Hamilton Holt (the lifelets), Emma Goldman, The WPA, Mike Gold, and August Spies.