The Bad Poor

Race, Class, and the Rise of Grit Lit

Mitch Ploskonka, Scott Romine

• Publisher: LSU Press
• Year: 2026
• Topic: Literature
• eBook ISBN:
  9780807186336
• Subtopic: North American Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

The Bad Poor examines the rise of Grit Lit, a movement in contemporary southern literature written by and about poor southern whites. Examining issues of genre, race, and culture, Mitch Ploskonka traces the emergence of this iconoclastic mode through its major authors to reveal a literary-cultural identity rooted in difference, marked by resistance to respectability and class performance, and shaped by reckoning with the legacies of whiteness and regional memory.

For those long dismissed as "white trash" and denied an active voice in their own representation, Grit Lit confronts the parallel concerns of finding a way to describe themselves and the means to communicate it appropriately. Beginning with Harry Crews and progressing chronologically to the present—including discussions of key works by Larry Brown, Dorothy Allison, Rick Bragg, and Tom Franklin, among others—Ploskonka examines how Grit Lit authors forge self-representations by experimenting with genres and engaging with identity politics. Through the ongoing search for a usable, unshameful identity, Grit Lit enacts a painful but heartening narrative of grappling with the realities of people and place by acknowledging difference.

As stories about the gritty or rough South proliferate across media, The Bad Poor relates an important story of literary self-fashioning by analyzing a body of literature that speaks to larger cultural discourses regarding racial identity, social justice, disability, and class divisions.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• INTRODUCTION: The Construction of Poor White Identity
• CHAPTER 1: Who Are We and How Do We Tell Our Stories? Defining Grit Lit
• CHAPTER 2: Harry Crews and the Myth of Authenticity in Grit Lit
• CHAPTER 3: Literary Naturalism and Poor White Masculinity in Larry Brown
• CHAPTER 4: Dorothy Allison’s Intersectional Realism
• CHAPTER 5: Grit Lit and Poor White Racism
• CONCLUSION: Grit Lit’s Expansion and the Future of Poor White Representation
• Notes
• Works Cited
• Index