Talk about class hierarchies (social, economic, and/or racial) in one or two of the following texts: Richard Wright’s “Down By the Riverside,” Debra Granik’s Winter’s Bone, W.E.B. DuBois’ The Souls of Black Folk, Ivan Turgenev’s Sketches from a Huntsman’s Album, Anton Chekhov’s “In the Ravine,” and/or Lee Isaac Chung’s Minari. How do these texts center (or fail to center) marginalized voices? How are the represented class structures shaped by or otherwise connected to the rural/peripheral environment?
Throughout history, marginalized voices were always disgruarded, interrupted, or unknown due to the severity of their oppression due to their social and economic status. Living in rural environments further disadvantage their economic status in the hierarchy. Ivan Turgenev’s Sketches from a Huntsman’s Album centers on the marginalized voices of the serfs somewhat unsuccessfully, in comparison to Debra Granik’s Winter’s Bone concentration on one of the poorest communities in America. Granik worked in collaboration with members of a rural community in the Missouri Ozarks to make the film and speech of the characters as authentic as possible, whereas Turgenev wrote his story cycle in isolation, using only his imagination and memories of his time in the Russian countryside.
