White trash is a liminal figure that dramatizes the intersection of race and class. Contemporary British novelists like Irvine Welsh, Niall Griffiths, and John King use this originally U.S.-American stereotype to interrogate the racializing discourse of class in British society. Their novels are interdiscursive reflections of the figurations of race and class that still haunt the British cultural imaginary. British White Trash is the first analysis to comprehensively examine the adaptation of the "white trash" stereotype in major British novels. The study thus contributes to a critical understanding of racism and classism, their cultural representations, and their underlying social processes.

The New York Times bestseller A New York Times Notable and Critics’ Top Book of 2016 Longlisted for the PEN/John Kenneth Galbraith Award for Nonfiction One of NPR's 10 Best Books Of 2016 Faced Tough Topics Head On NPR's Book Concierge Guide To 2016’s Great Reads San Francisco Chronicle's Best of 2016: 100 recommended books A Washington Post Notable Nonfiction Book of 2016 Globe & Mail 100 Best of 2016 “Formidable and truth-dealing . . . necessary.” —The New York Times “This eye-opening investigation into our country’s entrenched social hierarchy is acutely relevant.” —O Magazine In her groundbreaking bestselling history of the class system in America, Nancy Isenberg upends history as we know it by taking on our comforting myths about equality and uncovering the crucial legacy of the ever-present, always embarrassing—if occasionally entertaining—poor white trash. “When you turn an election into a three-ring circus, there’s always a chance that the dancing bear will win,” says Isenberg of the political climate surrounding Sarah Palin. And we recognize how right she is today. Yet the voters who boosted Trump all the way to the White House have been a permanent part of our American fabric, argues Isenberg. The wretched and landless poor have existed from the time of the earliest British colonial settlement to today's hillbillies. They were alternately known as “waste people,” “offals,” “rubbish,” “lazy lubbers,” and “crackers.” By the 1850s, the downtrodden included so-called “clay eaters” and “sandhillers,” known for prematurely aged children distinguished by their yellowish skin, ragged clothing, and listless minds. Surveying political rhetoric and policy, popular literature and scientific theories over four hundred years, Isenberg upends assumptions about America’s supposedly class-free society––where liberty and hard work were meant to ensure real social mobility. Poor whites were central to the rise of the Republican Party in the early nineteenth century, and the Civil War itself was fought over class issues nearly as much as it was fought over slavery. Reconstruction pitted poor white trash against newly freed slaves, which factored in the rise of eugenics–-a widely popular movement embraced by Theodore Roosevelt that targeted poor whites for sterilization. These poor were at the heart of New Deal reforms and LBJ’s Great Society; they haunt us in reality TV shows like Here Comes Honey Boo Boo and Duck Dynasty. Marginalized as a class, white trash have always been at or near the center of major political debates over the character of the American identity. We acknowledge racial injustice as an ugly stain on our nation’s history. With Isenberg’s landmark book, we will have to face the truth about the enduring, malevolent nature of class as well.

"White trash" is a liminal figure that dramatizes the intersection of race and class. Contemporary British novelists like Irvine Welsh, Niall Griffiths and John King use this originally US-American stereotype to interrogate the racializing discourse of class in British society. Their novels are interdiscursive reflections of the figurations of race and class that still haunt the British cultural imaginary. "British White Trash" is the first analysis to comprehensively examine the adaptation of the "white trash" stereotype in major British novels. The study thus contributes to a critical understanding of racism and classism, its cultural representations and its underlying social processes.

White trash. The phrase conjures up images of dirty rural folk who are poor, ignorant, violent, and incestuous. But where did this stigmatizing phrase come from? And why do these stereotypes persist? Matt Wray answers these and other questions by delving into the long history behind this term of abuse and others like it. Ranging from the early 1700s to the early 1900s, Not Quite White documents the origins and transformations of the multiple meanings projected onto poor rural whites in the United States. Wray draws on a wide variety of primary sources—literary texts, folklore, diaries and journals, medical and scientific articles, social scientific analyses—to construct a dense archive of changing collective representations of poor whites. Of crucial importance are the ideas about poor whites that circulated through early-twentieth-century public health campaigns, such as hookworm eradication and eugenic reforms. In these crusades, impoverished whites, particularly but not exclusively in the American South, were targeted for interventions by sanitarians who viewed them as “filthy, lazy crackers” in need of racial uplift and by eugenicists who viewed them as a “feebleminded menace” to the white race, threats that needed to be confined and involuntarily sterilized. Part historical inquiry and part sociological investigation, Not Quite White demonstrates the power of social categories and boundaries to shape social relationships and institutions, to invent groups where none exist, and to influence policies and legislation that end up harming the very people they aim to help. It illuminates not only the cultural significance and consequences of poor white stereotypes but also how dominant whites exploited and expanded these stereotypes to bolster and defend their own fragile claims to whiteness.

Lynsey Hanley was born and raised just outside of Birmingham on what was then the largest council estate in Europe, and she has lived for years on an estate in London's East End. Writing with passion, humour and a sense of history, she recounts the rise of social housing a century ago, its adoption as a fundamental right by leaders of the social welfare state in the mid-century and its decline - as both idea and reality - in the 1960s and '70s. Throughout, Hanley focuses on how shifting trends in urban planning and changing government policies - from Homes Fit for Heroes to Le Corbusier's concrete tower blocks, to the Right to Buy - affected those so often left out of the argument over council estates: the millions of people who live on them. What emerges is a vivid mix of memoir and social history, an engaging and illuminating book about a corner of society that the rest of Britain has left in the dark.

More than 200 recipes and 45 full-color photographs celebrate 25 years of good eatin’ in this original regional Southern cooking classic. A quarter-century ago, while many were busy embracing the sophisticated techniques and wholesome ingredients of the nouvelle cuisine, one Southern loyalist lovingly gathered more than 200 recipes—collected from West Virginia to Key West—showcasing the time-honored cooking and hospitality traditions of the white trash way. Ernie Mickler’s much-imitated sugarsnap-pea prose style accompanies delicacies like Tutti’s Fancy Fruited Porkettes, Mock-Cooter Stew, and Oven-Baked Possum; stalwart sides like Bette’s Sister-in-Law’s Deep-Fried Eggplant and Cracklin’ Corn Pone; waste-not leftover fare like Four-Can Deep Tuna Pie and Day-Old Fried Catfish; and desserts with a heavy dash of Dixie, like Irma Lee Stratton’s Don’t-Miss Chocolate Dump Cake and Charlotte’s Mother’s Apple Charlotte.

First published in 1997. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.