An unforgettable journey from seventh-grade dropout to celebrated professor
Her family was white, but not the right kind of white. They were five star white trash. They borrowed money and tried to buy class.
In this unflinching response to JD Vance's Hillbilly Elegy, Georgiann Davis guides us through her extraordinary life, from weighing almost 300 pounds by fifth grade, to dropping out of school in the seventh and on to selling weed out of her "monkey shit green" Plymouth Neon. A tall, fat girl who only wore boy's clothing, she grew up with a turbulent family outside of Chicago: the larger-than-life mother who looked like Farah Fawcett, the father who understood cars better than children, the brother whose drug use went unchecked, and the Greek grandparents who could only love her from afar. Then there was the shocking medical secret kept from her-one that upended everything she thought she knew about herself, gender, and the human body.
With unflinching candor and dark humor, Davis tells her 'stranger-than-fiction' life story in a brave voice that will have readers rooting for her. As Davis chronicles her surprising journey from middle-school dropout to 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 whiteness, the opioid crisis, and gendered and queer oppression. Faced with unimaginable setbacks-identity theft, home eviction, medical trauma, and family betrayal-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.

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

Reviews
"Rarely has a memoir about growing up poor and white looked at the categories 'poor' and 'white' so incisively. Georgiann Davis gives the reader an intimate account of a life of hardship, but this is not your average story of triumph over adversity. Rather, it is an unflinching but compassionate look at growing up in a family besieged by problems, and the advantages that whiteness confers in an otherwise underprivileged life. With a keen sociological eye, Davis also explores the ways in which seemingly extraordinary experiences - from the medical harm of making fat or intersex bodies socially acceptable to identity theft at the hands of a family member - are the historical outcomes of institutional power." - Grace M. Cho, author of Tastes Like War: A Memoir

"Brave and unflinching... Georgiann's story is moving and unforgettable, one that can help us understand ourselves, and just maybe, each other." - C.J. Pascoe, author of Nice is Not Enough: Inequality and the Limits of Kindness at American High

"Five Star White Trash is a memoir born of the sociological imagination...a sociology that is uncensored (often crass) but confronting in its honesty about class, gender, and race in America. Davis shows that behind each personal tragedy, trauma and memory is an array of social forces that shape our most personal reflections of who we are and what we can become." - Nicole Gonzalez Van Cleve, author of Crook County: Racism and Injustice in America's Largest Criminal Court

"Davis has written a gripping sociological memoir, which explores key contradictions in American family life, including sex and gender, race and privilege, poverty and addiction, commitment and betrayal. It's also about the making of a sociologist, an origin story for the insight and empathy that represent the best of our discipline. I couldn't put it down." - Philip N. Cohen, author of Citizen Scholar: Public Engagement for Social Scientists

"In this conversation-changer, you will discover the fascinating, and at times, truly unbelievable, story of Davis, who went from middle school drop-out to one of the country's foremost experts on the sociology of intersex experiences. With her life story as a backdrop, Davis expands our understanding of the interplay between social class, health, and race, while telling a story about the enduring ties, challenges, and strength of biological and found family." - Kristina Olson, Professor of Psychology, Princeton University



Book Information
ISBN 9781479840397
Author Georgiann Davis
Format Hardback
Page Count 264
Imprint New York University Press
Publisher New York University Press
Weight(grams) 572g