Reading Lisa McInerney’s essay in Common People (edited by Kit de Waal). It’s a thoughtful (and witty) exploration of class and I suppose asks us to question the notion (held by some) that if you’re just good at something you can level up to being middle class.

I took my job at Sunderland to help with my brother’s healthcare. It was my first long-term salaried job. I grew up on a council estate in a block of maisonettes and I remember a colleague telling me oh well, you’re middle class now. As if this is what I had been aiming for. I thought this was offensive. Should I be embarrassed about where I’ve come from, have I finally made it. No and no. So if I quit my job do I revert back to ‘square one’? No. I had never thought about my background in that way.

I realise this is all complex but it’s also frustrating to experience a sort of reverse snobbery. My past (as McInerney explores in this essay) has not been erased. I still worked 6 jobs to pay for my PhD. I still lived in all those dodgy places in all those dodgy areas because it was all I could afford. So does it mean because of what I have made now that other opportunities shouldn’t be open? Or that what brought me here (desire and hard work) just vanishes? Or that drudgery and grafting is the only value? It doesn’t, it isn’t. We should all be constantly finding ways to help each other, to get that door open and keep it that way. There is a certain, I think, reverse snobbery there that acts as a barrier though I can see things changing.

McInerney comments that working class identity is ‘slippery’ and I think that must be remembered. My life before now cannot and won’t be ‘written over’ to suit anyone else’s definition or need to categorise. ‘All those events and words and challenges and joys that informed my personality’ (McInerney) are because of my background and that is an immovable truth. We can’t forget to listen to people’s realities and to continue to question how some would require us to shape ourselves and our identity.

You can get Common People here and you should read it too.