We're Still Here: Pain and Politics in the Heart of America

by Jennifer M. Silva Narrated by Teri Barrington

Overview

In We're Still Here, Jennifer M. Silva tells a deep, multi-generational story of pain, place, and politics that will endure long after the Trump administration. Drawing on over 100 interviews with black, white, and Latino working-class residents of a declining coal town in Pennsylvania, Silva reveals how the decline of the American Dream is lived and felt. The routines and rhythms of traditional working-class life such as manual labor, unions, marriage, church, and social clubs have diminished. In their place, she argues, individualized strategies for coping with pain, and finding personal redemption, have themselves become sources of political stimulus and reaction among the working class. Understanding how generations of Democratic voters come to reject the social safety net and often politics altogether requires moving beyond simple partisanship into a maze of addiction, joblessness, family disruption, violence, and trauma. Instead, Silva argues that we need to uncover the relationships, loyalties, longings, and moral visions that underlie and generate the civic and political disengagement of working-class people.



We're Still Here provides powerful, on the ground evidence of the remaking of working-class identity and politics that will spark new tensions but also open up the possibility for shifting alliances and new possibilities.

Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly

06/10/2019

Sociologist Silva (Coming Up Short) presents an informative study on the political inclinations and widespread disengagement of working-class people in Pennsylvania’s Coal Region. This encapsulation of two years of interviews with 108 people paints a disturbing picture of pain and hopelessness. Many interviewees recall histories of abuse and assault, heroin habits, constant financial insecurity, racism, and PTSD. Consequently, most are, as one explains, “more worried about survival than the shit show of politics.” Silva’s study overlapped with the 2016 presidential election; overwhelmingly, those interviewed voted for Trump, even lifelong Democrats. Silva elucidates this choice, often in the interviewees’ own words: some espouse white supremacist beliefs, but many describe being attracted to Trump’s “unapologetic honesty” and promise to bring jobs back to the region. Silva demonstrates how the personal feeds into the political, how people project their frustrations—as well as their pain, disappointment, and anger—onto political candidates and onto each other (subjects blame and indemnify each other for taking advantage of entitlement programs and for lacking the motivation to pull themselves up by the proverbial bootstraps), dashing the potential for a large-scale, unified movement for working-class rights. This work, focused as it is on values and politics in a region with high electoral significance, will especially interest readers of Hillbilly Elegy and armchair political oracles. (Aug.)

From the Publisher

"We're Still Here is insightful, thoughtful and necessary... [it] combines sociological theory and intimate, personal research for a revealing look at the heartbreak in one of America's forgotten communities."- Foreword Reviews

"Anyone interested in the lives and motivations of blue-collar workers and their participation in the electoral process should read this insightful work."-Library Journal, Starred Review

"Silva demonstrates how the personal feeds into the political, how people project their frustrations—as well as their pain, disappointment, and anger—onto political candidates and onto each other."—Publisher's Weekly

"Silva's thoughtful, compelling study illustrates the complexities of work, race, and hope as the promise of the American Dream, for many, appears dim."—Booklist

"Silva's is an unforgiving book... But it's essential. It lays out one of the most fundamental cultural challenges of our time, and does so in a clear and thoughtful, if disturbing, way."—Inside Higher Ed

"As Silva reveals, many white residents (perhaps reluctantly) accepted an exchange of economic insecurity for the psychological comfort of white racial exceptionalism to deal with the changes. In fact, many whites interviewed for this book had constructed a working-class identity that rested primarily on their whiteness, leading one-time Democratic Party loyalists to support Donald Trump . . . Highly recommended." — CHOICE

Library Journal

★ 06/01/2019

Drawing upon more than 100 interviews conducted in the anthracite coal region of Pennsylvania, Silva (sociology, Bucknell Univ.; Coming Up Short) explores how blue-collar workers connect their everyday lives, experiences, and struggles to their politics. The author supplies pseudonyms and amalgamates the towns into one, called Coal Brook, to protect the respondents. Many of the interviews were conducted in the run-up to the 2016 presidential election. Interviewees come from a variety of racial and ethnic backgrounds and include new arrivals to the region as well as those whose roots stretch back several generations. Silva challenges the assumption that blue-collar workers uniformly turned out for Trump, having discovered that many of the people, regardless of race, age, gender, or background, deeply mistrusted government and other social institutions, with many believing their votes were inconsequential. Many of the stories are truly heartrending and thought provoking. VERDICT Anyone interested in the lives and motivations of blue-collar workers and their participation in the electoral process should read this insightful work.—Chad E. Statler, Westlake Porter P.L., Westlake, OH

Product Details

BN ID:	2940173959171
Publisher:	HighBridge Company
Publication date:	10/15/2019
Edition description:	Unabridged

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