Overview

In a society marked by economic upheaval and increasing ideological shifts to the right, whose stories are truly heard? This ground-breaking volume places working-class women centre stage - both in fiction and autobiography - challenging the silences and stereotypes that have long dominated British literature. From the hard-hitting realism of Livi Michael and Joan Riley's novels-laying bare the material and psychological costs of deprivation and discrimination-to the nuanced reimagining of identity and community in the autobiographies of Jeanette Winterson and her historical predecessors, this book explores the complex interplay of social class with gender, sexuality, and race. The author analyses the political urgency of fiction and the subjectivity of memoir through a multidisciplinary lens, engaging with Marxist, feminist, and post-structural theorists to interrogate the transformative possibilities of literature and its limitations, demonstrating how working-class women's stories both challenge and complicate our understanding of truth, representation, and social change. Essential reading for those interested in working-class writing, gender studies, or the politics of voice, this book offers a powerful reminder: to reconstruct the past and imagine new futures, we must first listen to those on the margins.

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9781739329846

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Sue Petty lives in Leicestershire, UK. She holds a PhD focussed on working-class women's writing and an MPhil specialising in working-class women's autobiography. Her interests include reading radical texts and walking through the local countryside, exploring its rich social history.

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