Table of Contents:
  • Whitman's 1855 Leaves of grass : "hard work and blood"
  • Class and the performative in Rebecca Harding Davis's Life in the iron mills, and Steven Crane's Maggie
  • Body tramping, class, and masculine extremes : Jack London's The people of the abyss
  • "Aways your heart" : class designs in Jean Toomer's Cane
  • Meridel Le Sueur's Salute to spring : "a movement up which all are moving"
  • Class, work, and new races : Zora Neale Hurston's Their eyes were watching God and Agnes Smedley's Daughter of earth
  • Class "truths" in James Agee's Let us now praise famous men
  • Conclusion: Going back to class.