Working Class Life in Novels & Non Fiction

Rick Bragg's family is entrenched in working class life. The trials and struggles of such a life are chronicled in his books. Take a look at the authors below for more stories about the working class, blue collar people who make America what it is.

Fiction
America, America: A Novel by Ethan Canin
Bastard Out of Carolina by Dorothy Allison
Down And Out In Paris & London by George Orwell
Empire Falls by Richard Russo
A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry
The Girl From Charnelle: A Novel by K.L. Cook
The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros
A Killing In This Town by Olympia Vernon
The Last of Her Kind: A Novel by Sigrid Nunez
Last Orders by Graham Swift
The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven by Sherman Alexie
Love Medicine by Louise Erdrich
Mystic River by Dennis Lehane
Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler
Sons And Lovers by D. H. Lawrence
The Sweet Hereafter by Russell Banks
Trainspotting by John Hodge
What You Have Left by Will Allison
White Teeth by Zadie Smith
The Witness of St. Ansgar's: A Novel by Francis Nielsen


Non Fiction
The Big Squeeze: Tough Times for the American Worker by Steven Greenhouse
Death in the Haymarket: A Story of Chicago, The First Labor Movement, & The Bombing That Divided Gilded Age America by James Green
Don't Get Above Your Raisin': Country Music and the Southern Working Class by Bill C. Malone
The Missing Class: Portraits of the Near Poor in America by Katherine S. Newman and Victor Tan Chen
Nickel & Dimed by Barbara Ehrenreich
Fair Shares For All: A Memoir of Family and Food by John Haney
The Working Poor: Invisible in America by David K. Shipler