• Lennard J. Davis, "Poor Things: How Those with Money Depict Those Without It" (Duke UP, 2024)

  • Jan 29 2025
  • Length: 1 hr and 12 mins
  • Podcast

Lennard J. Davis, "Poor Things: How Those with Money Depict Those Without It" (Duke UP, 2024)

Listen for free

View show details

  • Summary

  • For generations most of the canonical works that detail the lives of poor people have been created by rich or middle-class writers like Charles Dickens, John Steinbeck, or James Agee. This has resulted in overwhelming depictions of poor people as living abject, violent lives in filthy and degrading conditions. In Poor Things: How Those with Money Depict Those Without It (Duke UP, 2024), Lennard J. Davis labels this genre ‘poornography”: distorted narratives of poverty written by and for the middle and upper classes. Davis shows how poornography creates harmful and dangerous stereotypes that build barriers to social justice and change. To remedy this, Davis argues, poor people should write realistic depictions of themselves, but because of representational inequality they cannot. Given the obstacles to the poor accessing the means of publication, Davis suggests that the work should, at least for now, be done by “transclass” writers who were once poor and who can accurately represent poverty without relying on stereotypes and clichés. Only then can the lived experience of poverty be more fully realized. The Endo/Exo Writers Project. Nathan Smith is a PhD candidate in Music Theory at Yale University nathan.smith@yale.edu Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/economics
    Show more Show less
Show more Show less

What listeners say about Lennard J. Davis, "Poor Things: How Those with Money Depict Those Without It" (Duke UP, 2024)

Average customer ratings

Reviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.

Audible.com reviews

Amazon reviews
No Reviews are Available