Tales of Two Americas: Stories of Inequality in a Divided Nation

Chris Offutt’s contribution is a personal essay about class in modern America and the association between food and social status. Offutt recounts how he was approached by an acquaintance (“John T”) to write a piece on “trash food,” or inexpensive cuisine associated with people of low social class. This “trash food,” like crawfish, occasionally undergoes gentrification and becomes popular with elites. Then it appears on menus all over the country. Offutt is immediately affronted but also ashamed of his class and Appalachian background.

Others make egregious assumptions about people from Appalachia and direct microaggressions at people like Offutt, including jokes about having sex with one’s own sister. Though he has long left Kentucky, Offutt still copes with shame about his background: “I was ashamed—of my fifteen-year-old Mazda, my income, and my rented home” (73). Moreover, people of low social class are themselves deemed “trash” and treated as disposable. As Offutt writes, “I am trash because I’m white and poor. I am trash because I’m from a specific region—the rural South. Polite society regards me as stupid, lazy, ignorant, violent, and untrustworthy” (75). “White trash” is a common epithet of disparagement.