Janet

You're already an expert in the canon of working-class fiction.  But,
here are some under-represented possibilities:

Jack London.  Martin Eden.
        London's roman a clef engages with the tangled relations among work,
culture, class, and authorship.  Has been very successful in my classes.

John Fante. Wait until Spring, Bandini. (1938)
        The first of Fante's "Rico Bandini Quartet" - - which seems to surge
onto and off the cultural map as the decades go by.

Luis Rodriguez.  The Republic of East L.A. (2003)
        I like his novel,  Music of the Mill too.  And his non-fiction
memoir, Always Running, is great - - especially as it explores
tensions between "la vida loca" and political consciousness.  But, in
re fiction, the short story seems to work better for him in covering
his preferred scene  - -  working-class Chicano life in L.A.

Dagoberto Gilb.  The Magic of Blood. (1994)
        Great short story collection - - Raymond Carver meets East L.A. as
Gilb hones his minimalist style against the hard realities of working-
class Chicano experience.  Never understood why this book remains
under-read.

Tomas Rivera.  . . . y no se lo trago la tierra ( . . and the Earth
Did Not Devour Him). (1971)
        Contemporaneous with Jose Antonio Villareal's Pocho, I like Rivera's
more experimental style as he narrates the experience of the son of
migrant workers.

Abraham Rodriguez. Spidertown. (1994)
        Rodriguez's first novel  - - about the crack economy of the South
Bronx.  Rodriquez's second novel, The Buddha Book, is pretty
interesting too - - using the comic book created by its two
protagonists to set up some provocative questions about how to narrate
the violence, poverty, and desperation of Puerto Rican adolescence in
the South Bronx.

Daniel Cano.  Shifting Loyalties. (1995)
        An under-appreciated novel about working-class Chicanos passing
through the fire of Vietnam.

Junot Diaz.  Drown (1996). and The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
(2007)
        Brief Wondrous Life won the big prizes and is a rich meditation on
language, identity, and narration - - I still like Diaz's short story
collection, Drown, which serves up some startling voices and stories.

Excepting Martin Eden and Brief Wondrous Life, these novels are
generally not as explicit in engaging with questions of aestheticizing
poverty or class difference as Olsen, Agee, and Davis.   Still, their
stylistic choices might speak to the kinds of questions I think you're
interested in.  (Too many male voices, I know.)


Larry Hanley
Associate Professor
Dept. of English
San Francisco State University

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