Some time ago, a writing mentor of mine encouraged me to tap into my working-class background as a “differentiator,” to help promote myself.
It has not really paid off. I think the only people who care are those who picked up on my background already through my writing, and I am constantly afraid of being dragged for trying to trade on my crappy childhood when I am now so well off.
There are many examples of working class folks who made it, only to be derided for either not having had it bad enough to start, or daring to live the lifestyle they can now afford. Bruce Springsteen was excoriated for buying a mansion, David Lee Roth was not.
It’s a catch-22 that feels familiar. You have to be “deserving” and also not ask for charity and also work hard and also be grateful…
BAH. I’ve spent too much of my life struggling to be “deserving.” Having been given that label, “deserving”–school teachers and bosses applied it to me in recommendation letters–“despite her background” or “has risen above her background”– never felt good. It felt condescending. I was deserving not because of what I had done, but because I was what the person speaking wanted to see in the needy. Not my intelligence, not my strength, but my skin color, my able body, my deference, my meekness.
So, though I have tried to “trade on” my background in poverty, I realize I have to stop. Give it up. I tried, that failed. To even mention it is to encourage scrutiny. Just what do I mean by “poor”? Can I give a figure? How many days did I go hungry? How many nights without a roof?
When I was a kid, I often got into these arguments at school:
Them: Why haven’t you seen any movies?
Me: Well, we’re poor.
Them: You’re not poor, I’M poor, and we see all the movies.
Me: We’re on welfare.
Them: So are we.
Me: We don’t have food all the time.
Them: We eat nothing but peanut butter and government cheese!
Me: We only get powdered milk from the food bank!
Them: Powdered milk? Luxury! You can make pancakes with that. We never have so much! Our food baskets are nothing but canned beans!
And on and on… there was no explanation that would make you poorer than the other, yet you feel the need to win the “one-downsmanship” contest.
Here’s a weird fact about humans: No one has suffered as you have, because we are all living separate lives. The worst you have experienced is, for you, the worst. The best you have experienced is, for you, the best.
Having left my sheltered community and gone out into the world, I have now met far, far more people who have had it worse than me in life, objectively worse. We had a roof, and we kept it. I went to a good public school, with extracurriculars and arts programs.
My dad was right when he cut off our complaining with, “You got it good!” But boy did I not want to hear it when I was twelve.
We all judge ourselves by comparison. We don’t see the people below us, only the people we believe have it better. We stare at the green grass, not the weeds.
And, yes, I have met many who are startlingly blind to their good fortune.
I don’t want to be blind to my good fortune. I was insanely lucky that my parents got a house in a good school district, that I had support from my teachers and guidance counselor that helped me get into CWRU, that I got a near full-ride to CWRU. I look back on the path and marvel at how blind I was, stumbling down it, unaware of the sharp cliffs that could have taken me. When I almost failed out of college, one professor gave me a “pity D” that saved me. When my scholarships ran out, I was able to get a “parent loan” in my own name. When I became sick without insurance, my friend Malcolm loaned me the money for my medical bills. I was able shortly after to get a job with insurance and find out what was wrong with me before I died of it. All strokes of luck.
I feel the urge, and I know it exists in others: I suffered, why can’t I at least enjoy being seen as having suffered? Despite being well-off and comfortable and having all the things now, I still have the urge to pick food off abandoned plates, or slip an extra packet of saltines into my pocket because they are FREE. I might need that later. This having-been-hungry will never leave me. It might be why I have Crohn’s disease, having not been too careful about eating spoiled or abandoned food. Or weeds. Or paper. (We ate a lot of paper.) It’s a wound so deep that forty years later, it’s still healing.
But I can choose not to make it the whole of my identity. I choose to be more than the hunger and the envy that made me a very irritating teenager.
Y’all, we are SO BOUGIE now. I have a hot water tap on my sink! We have Apple TV, and we barely watch it! We bought a month pass to the local car wash! I’m not sure we still count as “middle class” because when we zeroed out our savings for the dog’s surgery, we ended up putting money back in savings only two months later.
So no, I can’t be a working class hero. If that’s even something to be. (As the song says.) All I can do is be me, and see where that takes me. So, I have changed the tag line on my website from “Working class science fiction” to “Class-conscious science fiction.” It feels more honest.
