On Class

Deborah Dundas is a journalist who grew up poor and almost didn¿t make it to university. In On Class, she talks to writers, activists, those who work with the poor and those who are poor about what happens when we don¿t talk about poverty or class¿and what will happen when we do.
Stories about poor people are rarely written by the poor¿and when they are written they tend to fit into a hero narrative. Through hard work, smarts, and temerity, the hero pulls themselves up by their bootstraps in a narrative that simply provides an easy exception: look, we don¿t have to give you more, you just have to work harder. On Class is an exploration of the ways we talk about class: of who tells the stories and who doesn¿t, and why that has to change. It asks the question: What don¿t we talk about when we don¿t talk about class? We don¿t talk about luck, or privilege, or entitlement. We don¿t talk about the trauma that goes along with being poor.