Working-class women in the academy

Michelle M. Tokarczyk, Elizabeth A. Fay

"My mother still wants me to get a 'real' job. My father, who is retired after forty-four years in the merchant marine, has never read my work. When I visited recently, the only book in his house was the telephone book." "I do not know that my mother's mother ever acknowledged my college education except to ask me once, 'How can you live so far away from your people?'. Thus write two of the twenty women from working-class backgrounds whose voices are heard in this unique collection of essays. Each of the women has lived through the process of academic socialization - as both student and teacher - and each has thought long and deeply about her experience from an explicitly feminist perspective. Among the questions the contributors explore, What are the issues - pedagogical, theoretical, and personal - that affect the professional and private lives of these women? How do they resolve tensions between their roles as middle-class professionals and their roots in working-class families? How do class and gender intersect in the academy?