White Folks: Race and Identity in Rural America (Writing Lives: Ethnographic Narratives) - Hardcover

Lensmire, Timothy J.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1032676205 ISBN 13: 9781032676203

Publisher: Routledge, 2024

Synopsis

White Folks explores the experiences and stories of eight white people from a small farming community in northern Wisconsin. Drawing on in-depth interviews with Delores, Frank, William, Erin, Robert, Libby, and Stan, as well as on his own experiences growing up in this same rural community, Lensmire creates a portrait of white people that highlights the profound ambivalence that has characterized white thinking and feeling in relation to people of color for at least the last two hundred years. White people’s relations to people of color and their cultures are characterized not just by fear, rejection, and violence, but also by attraction, envy, and desire. There is nothing smooth about the souls of white folks.

This second edition of White Folks features a new foreword―by renowned critical whiteness studies scholar David Roediger―that places the book in historical and political context. It also includes an expanded discussion by Lensmire on doing research on race with white people.

About this title

About the Author

Timothy J. Lensmire is Professor of Curriculum and Instruction at the University of Minnesota, where he teaches courses in literacy, critical pedagogy, and race.

Edition details

• Publisher: Routledge
• Publication date: 2024
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1032676205
• ISBN 13: 9781032676203
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 2
• Number of pages: 118