When my first novel, Fodder, was published in 2002, assumptions were made about who I was and where I came from, and I blame myself to some extent — I was often cagey about my origins. When interviewers asked where I was from and what my parents did, were they writers, did they encourage me and help me, I preferred to fudge the issue and change the subject. I was ashamed of my origins.
I was born and bred in a working-class Protestant housing estate on the northern outskirts of Belfast and lived there until I was 28. I came from a single-parent family and grew up on benefits; no one encouraged me to write — I wrote because I was creative and didn’t have the money, materials or connections to practise the art form I really loved: film. But my reticence, combined with common assumptions, had me pigeonholed as a “middle-class lassie”.
I was angry. And shocked — not just by the assumption, but because I hadn’t, until that point, been aware of any class loyalty. I’ve since learned that class experience leaves what sociologist Sam Friedman calls an “emotional imprint”; it embeds itself deep in one’s psyche and leads to long-lasting loyalties (and a whole tangle of divided loyalties when we’re socially mobile, but that’s another story). Even when we believe we’ve left our pasts behind, our bonds to family and place linger.
For a start, working-class writers have very little symbolic capital. Symbolic capital is a concept developed by French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu
But why was I ashamed of being working-class and from a Protestant background? And why the assumption by others that I was middle class, when my novel was set in a working-class Protestant housing estate suspiciously like one on the northern outskirts of Belfast? Why do I feel that 20 years later, not much has changed in this landscape of assumptions?
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For a start, working-class writers have very little symbolic capital. Symbolic capital is a concept developed by French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, who was the first to theorise cultural capital. According to Bourdieu, cultural capital exists in three states — embodied, objectified and institutionalised: embodied capital includes things like accent, gesture, posture, tastes and preferences we get from our families, as well as knowledge we’ve learned; objectified capital includes things like books, art, classical music, and things that require specialised knowledge, like lab equipment or a cello; institutionalised capital refers to qualifications we get from universities or specialist bodies.
Symbolic capital is a reputation and/or respect for having, and being known to have, any and all of the above. If working-class writers have little symbolic capital, the North of Ireland has less, and Prods have least of all. I believe there is a generalised distaste towards working-class Protestants in the North that devalues the cultural production of that community.
It is difficult enough for working-class writers to receive attention: Paul McVeigh and Kit de Waal have spoken widely about the lack of time, resources, connections, access and confidence these writers face; it’s why de Waal created Common People, an anthology of working-class writers from across the UK and Ireland, and McVeigh its sister publication, The 32, featuring working-class writers from across Ireland.
Even when working-class writers are published, the problems don’t end: when Fodder was published, I lacked the knowledge (or embodied capital) to talk about and contextualise my work — in an interview with a lofty arts and culture radio programme, I was stumped by questions about satire and language and felt like a gibbering idiot. I didn’t study English at university, I studied advertising in the hope of landing a well-paid job.
To come from the North adds yet more hurdles (going by recent social media activity, people from the North may not even be Irish, no matter which ideology they were born into or follow), with the six counties’ dodgy history, its vindictive leaders and tendency to microfocus on the past. To be of Protestant heritage on top of that is to be Sisyphus flattened by his rock, struggling to succeed against near-impossible odds.
Bourdieu theorises that we distinguish ourselves from others by setting ourselves above or below them on the social ladder, according to our cultural tastes, as demonstrated by our ownership of legitimate cultural capital — that is, capital whose value is accepted, approved and agreed upon by the cultural elite (educated, connected, talented people in positions of social power and influence).
Bourdieu realised that the most powerful kind of domination is carried out covertly: he called it symbolic domination, when dominant groups in society … decide what has cultural value
In recent years, the cultural elite have been called “cultural omnivores” for accepting and appreciating everything from Croatian folksongs to Happycore, neoclassical sculpture to street art, but my feeling is that this appetite doesn’t extend to working-class Protestant writers from the North. No one wants to hear them, no one wants to know. I’d go so far as to say that the slim literary pickings from that community signal an indirect and covert kind of censorship.
Bourdieu realised that the most powerful kind of domination is carried out covertly: he called it symbolic domination, when dominant groups in society (the elite, the middle class, those with decision-making power) decide what has cultural value, and groups with less social power buy into this, accepting this as the “right way”. In terms of the North, this is evident in the widely held anecdotal belief that Catholics are artistic and Protestants are not.
The gatekeepers of culture may deny legitimacy, but the working-class Protestant community seems to have internalised the myth that they can’t write (see Connal Parr’s book Inventing the Myth for more on this): they rarely see books or artworks that realistically represent them or their lives, or come across writers in their own community or in the media, and it’s easy to see how they might believe they are not creative or good at writing.
There is also the strange opinion that writing from, or about, Northern Prods can only be of interest to people who are interested in Northern Ireland — I’ve come across this sentiment three times in as many days from critics and literary figures who should know better. It’s like saying you should only read American literature if you are interested in America, or read Argentinian literature if you are interested in Argentina, or Nigerian literature if you are interested in Nigeria.
Imagine a contemporary Sam Thompson or a freshly hatched Gary Mitchell-write-a-like, bringing us the experience of Irish class from a new rural, gendered, ethnic, queer or environmental perspective
What a loss to think this way. And yet we do when it comes to a small, unfashionable group in the North. How could this unlikeable bunch possibly inform our understanding of humanity, draw from us the deepest emotions, have us recognise and laugh at ourselves, or inspire us to change ourselves or the world? They might, if we gave them a chance.
Imagine a contemporary Sam Thompson or a freshly hatched Gary Mitchell-write-a-like, bringing us the experience of Irish class from a new rural, gendered, ethnic, queer or environmental perspective. Imagine many more Lisa Harkers, bringing their joy and wisdom to a theatre near you. Did you see Leesa Harker’s Maggie Muff plays? I bet you didn’t. But if you had, you would have witnessed the authentic carnivalesque of working-class culture and some deep and powerful insights into poverty and strained mother-daughter relationships.
Imagine more clever, funny and touching novels like those of Ian Cochrane, bringing us into the world of deranged, yet warm and generous humans; imagine publications from shiny new Sam McAughtrys, Glenn Pattersons and David Parks (both Patterson and Park are of working-class origin). Some female authors wouldn’t go amiss either.
Contemporary poetry from working-class Protestant writers is faring better than fiction in terms of publication: Scott McKendry’s Curfuffle is a riotous slap to the senses: energised and energising, it’s an unsentimental collection about his childhood home which is at once shocking, playful and dazzling. Dawn Watson’s first collection, We Play Here, published recently by Granta, is a brilliantly original, exquisitely crafted account of four pre-teen friends growing up in Belfast in the 1980s, that melds imagination, hope, wonder, prosaic violence and the desperate ache of Sehnsucht [desire]. Imagine they were to inspire more working-class Protestant writers, and someone, somewhere, was willing to publish them. What new ideas and experiences might we encounter if we opened the door a little wider?
I know why I didn’t like to admit being a working-class Prod, and why others assumed I must be middle class. I bought into the idea, as many still do, that working-class Prods are thick, talentless, boorish and uncultured, and I couldn’t possibly be one of them. I am ashamed, now, of how I used to feel, but I suppose the real shame is that we don’t think and talk more about class in Ireland, North or South, because it leads to a very threadbare lineage. In accepting literary silence — any literary silence — we do ourselves a great disservice, culturally and otherwise.
