Let me start with a story. Traveling back roads to get to my small hometown in southeastern Appalachian Ohio, I stop at the gas station near Dillon Lake, outside Zanesville, for a bathroom break. At the cooler, in line, all around the small store, working men dressed in beat-up jeans, dirty t-shirts, and heavy shoes pick up chips, soft drinks, beer, candy bars. They drive the pick-up trucks and vans in the parking lot. There I am, in leggings, tunic, and walking shoes, driving a Mini-Cooper, getting water. My tentative smiles and attempts to make eye contact prior to making small conversation, even with the female clerk, are evaded.

They do not know I am from the same hills. They do not know my husband is a carpenter and heads for a shower and a beer when he gets home. I do not know if any of them are readers or writers. I do not know who they might vote for (“blue” voters do exist in “red” counties and states). What they see, I suspect, is an educated parents’ daughter. What they see is that their lives are hard and mine is easy. And they are right.

Just five minutes. No sneering or condescension on my part. No hostility or anger on theirs. An ordinary business transaction in rural United States. But class marks it, through and through. Class marks us through and through. My attitudes, values, and behaviors were shaped by educated parents who lived and worked as ill-paid high school teachers in a scorned, stereotyped, and ridiculed part of the country. My educational heritage and education mean I do not belong in that country store. Yet my rural Appalachian heritage makes me feel like an interloper in academia.

So I feel empathy for Virginia Woolf 's class dilemma: “Did they know how much she admired them? [Kitty] wanted to say. Would they accept her in spite of her hat and her gloves? She wanted to ask. But they were all going off to their work. And I am going home to dress for dinner” (TY 73).