Five Star White Trash: A Memoir of Fraud and Family - Hardcover

Davis, Georgiann

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1479840394 ISBN 13: 9781479840397

Verlag: New York University Press, 2025

Inhaltsangabe

An unforgettable journey from seventh-grade dropout to celebrated professor

Georgiann Davis’ family is white, but not the right kind of white. They’re five star white trash. They borrowed money and tried to buy class.

In this upside-down and queer response to JD Vance's Hillbilly Elegy, Davis introduces readers to the relatives who shaped her turbulent childhood: the Greek grandparents who guided her, the father who understood cars better than children, and the brother whose violence went unchecked in their home. Looming over them all was Davis’ larger-than-life mother, who displayed her love through gifts they couldn’t afford, empowering Davis with life lessons even as she downplayed their financial struggles. It took years to uncover the shocking medical secrets that her mother had kept from her —secrets that upended everything she thought she knew about gender and the human body.

Davis guides us through her unusual life, from running the family’s ice cream business to selling weed in her “monkey shit green” Dodge Neon. As she chronicles her journey from seventh-grade dropout to sociology professor, she reveals how whiteness colored her family’s struggles. She connects her personal experiences of medical abuse, fatphobia, and fear of the intersex body with incisive critiques of white supremacy, the opioid crisis, and gendered oppression. Faced with unimaginable setbacks—identity theft, medical struggles, and family turmoil—Davis relentlessly pursued education. It was this quest that transformed her life, giving her the tools to tell her own story. The result is a deeply moving memoir which complicates our understanding of upward mobility and familial love.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Georgiann Davis is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of New Mexico. She is the author of Contesting Intersex: The Dubious Diagnosis.

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: New York University Press
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2025
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 1479840394
• ISBN 13: 9781479840397
• Einband: Gebundene Ausgabe
• Anzahl der Seiten: 272
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Mare Nostrum Group B.V.; gpsr@mare-nostrum.co.uk; ; Doelen 72; Breda; 4831 GR; Niederlande