Paperback Edition
ISBN: 9781558612594
Publication Date: 04-01-2001

"Let us imagine what it would be like," writes Janet Zandy at the outset of this ground-breaking volume, "if the history and culture of working-class people were at the center of educational practices. What would students learn?" Among other things, she suggests, "they would understand that culture is created by individuals within social contexts and that they themselves could produce it as well as consume it."

Working-class history and literature have too often been ignored in traditional curricula, remain invisible in most texts, and are unavailable to students and teachers. Essential reading for all interested in the rapidly growing field of working-class studies, What We Hold in Common offers a distinct combination of primary voices, critical essays, and resources for curriculum transformation. It deepens the understanding of working-class literature, history, culture, and artistic production, while attending to the material conditions of working-class peoples' lives.

"At last, at last, an invaluable, pioneering, source book. It does what you want working-class studies to do—it rouses consciousness." —Tillie Olsen, author of Tell Me a Riddle

"This is a wonderful and useful volume. Janet Zandy is a pioneer in working-class studies who has produced a text we can take to our classes, our friends, our families, and our organizations. She and the authors in this book have helped make 'class' an idea whose time has come again. With runaway globalization in society and with hostile corporatization in the university, we need a book like this to strengthen our humanity and our resistance." —Ira Shor, author of Empowering Education

"Janet Zandy's exciting collection makes it clear to all that working-class studies is a legitimate field of study, one that moves to empower us all by making us the subjects, rather that the objects, of academic inquiry." —Lillian S. Robinson, author of Wonder Women: Feminisms and Superheroes