Poor Things

Lennard J. Davis is Distinguished Professor of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University of Illinois Chicago and the author of many books, including Enabling Acts: The Hidden Story of How the Americans with Disabilities Act Gave the Largest US Minority Its Rights.

“Lennard J. Davis’s Poor Things provocatively argues that those who write about poor people but are not or have not themselves been poor are governed by various tropes and protocols that serve to depict the poor as revolting and ultimately less human than the rich. The implications of the argument go well beyond the nineteenth-century focus that Davis adopts, having resonances for fields such as economics, anthropology, sociology, and others. Poor Things is a masterpiece of intellectual suggestiveness.” - Ato Quayson, Jean G. and Morris M. Doyle Professor of Interdisciplinary Studies, Stanford University “Lennard J. Davis has little to no faith in the ability of middle-class writers to write about poor people without relying on stereotypes. Using a personal narrative, so important to working-class academic writing, allows Davis to convincingly argue that a purely structural class critique is insufficient because such critique typically overlooks the realities of the lived experience of poverty. Therein lie the stakes of his book: that novels written by people in poverty can act as a cultural brake on the social dynamics by which the moneyed and the impoverished are, right now, pulled so violently apart.” - Matt Brim, author of (Poor Queer Studies: Confronting Elitism in the University) "Whether considering the hypocrisy of 'poornography' or the common limitations of well-meaning characterizations of the impoverished, Davis's range of authentic criticism is impressive. . . . Poor Things provides a deep reflection and the start of a conversation that could go on forever." - Theodore Bain (Journal of American Culture)

• Preface. What It’s All About?  ixIntroduction. Scenes from a Life and from Lives  1Interchapter 1. Why Me?  211. How to Read This Book and How the Lives of the Poor Have Been Read, or Why You? 252. The Problem of Representing the Poor  423. Transclass: Endo- and Exo-writers  704. Biocultural Myths of the Poor Body  1105. Female Sex Workers  1536. The Encounter, or, the Object Talks Back  170Interchapter 2. They Got It Right Now?  205Conclusion. What Is to Be Done? Endings and Beginnings  219Notes  231Bibliography  253Index