This volume contains a collection of essays on the issues and concerns that face women from working-class backgrounds who enter academic careers. Following an introduction and transcript of a dialogue between Kate Ellis and Lillain S. Robinson, the essays are as follows: "What's a Nice Working-Class Girl Like You Doing in a Place Like This?" (Saundra Gardner); "Who Am I Now? The Politics of Class Identity" (Donna Langston); "Writing and Teaching with Class" (Valerie Miner); "A Question of Belonging" (Joanna Kadi); "Keeping Close to Home: Class and Education" (bell hooks); "A Mennonite 'Hard Worker' Moves from the Working Class and the Religious/Ethnic Community to Academia: A Conflict Between Two Definitions of Work" (Laura H. Weaver); "Grandma Went to Smith, All Right, but She Went from Nine to Five: A Memoir" (Patricia Clark Smith); "A Farmer's Daughter in Academia" (Jacqueline Burnside); "Yer Own Motha Wouldna Reckanized Ya: Surviving an Apprenticeship in the 'Knowledge Factory'" (Suzanne Sowinska); "Pass the Cake: The Politics of Gender, Class, and Text in the Academic Workplace" (Pam Annas); "'Someone to Watch Over Me': Politics and Paradoxes in Academic Mentoring" (Cheryl Fish); "Working-Class Women as Students and Teachers" (Elisabeth Johnson); "Teaching the Working Woman" (Rose Zimbardo); "Recasting the 'Politics of Truth': Thoughts on Class, Gender, and the Role of Intellectuals" (Pamela A. Fox); "Vestments and Vested Interests: Academia, the Working Class, and Affirmative Action" (Sharon O'Dair); "Language: Closings and Openings" (Pat Belanoff);"Dissent in the Field; or, a New Type of Intellectual?" (Elizabeth A. Fay); "Telling Tales in School: A Redneck Daughter in the Academy" (Hephzibah Roskelly); and "By the Rivers of Babylon" (Michelle M. Tokarczyk). Includes an index and notes on the contributors; contains 53 references. (JB)