Zandy's Introduction

There are two main ideas from Zandy's introduction that I found to be the most memorable. The line that stood out first was, "And their writing is not read in literature classes" (Zandy, 5). This sentence struck me the most because it is something that is valid to my life. I never really stopped to think about it, but when I read this sentence, I realized that the books that are assigned for the class have never previously been introduced to me. And for that matter, the only female that I have ever been introduced to in a literature class was, Erica Jong. Even in highschool, we were only assigned male authors, with the exception of Alice Walker. On my own, I have read a few female authors, but I have never stopped to think about whether the woman was a member of the working class or not.
The second idea that was of interest to me was that "class identity is easier to obscure and deny than gender and race identity" (Zandy, 2). There are things that one can do to mask their social class identity, for example, by changing the way one dresses, or how one uses words when speaking to members of a class higher than their own. But, it is not just the words that one says, or the specific topic in which they choose to speak, but it is also in the way that one says things. For example, different classes tend to have different accents. In my home town, for instance, there is the "farmer" , or poor, part of town, and the "rich" part of town, and language is completely different between the two. So I found it interesting that Zandy chose to compare the masking of class identity with that of race or gender masking. Which I guess in some cases can be done (i.e Michael Jackson, or G.I. Jane) but it is much more difficult than class masking.

Zandy, Janet. Calling Home: Working Class Women's Writings: an anthology edited and with an introduction by Janet Zandy. 1990 by Rutgers, The State University.