Writer Jaydra Johnson was raised in a series of small towns in Oregon.
Her world, she says, was a far cry from the artisanal coffee shops and farm-to-table restaurants of Portland, the city many people imagine when they think of her state. Her community was characterized by things like motorsports, hunting, and the Baptist Church — which meant that there was a term she often heard used to describe people who lived where she lived: “white trash.”
Growing up, Johnson watched friends and family endure cycles of eviction, starvation, abuse, and incarceration, and resolved to move as far away from her upbringing as possible.
But as she recently wrote about in a new book, which was recently excerpted on Lithub, ultimately, she circled back. And as an adult, she says she has a much different relationship with the phrase “white trash.”
Full conversation
JAYDRA JOHNSON: The term has come to be more of like a badge of honor to me after the process of writing this book and doing all this research. And yeah, I just saw the ways in which that term had been used to really denigrate the people around me.
SAM DINGMAN: When do you remember first hearing this term and realizing that it was being used to describe you?
JOHNSON: It might have been even one of my family members using it against someone else who basically was in the same position as us. But the ways that that word is used like within the group of white trash people is really fascinating to me, especially because I really made an effort to be upwardly mobile and kind of like escape what I saw as my inheritance. And sometimes I pass as someone who is not culturally white trash. And it's sometimes very interesting to hear the things people have to say in front of me when they don't know.
DINGMAN: Could you give me any, any examples of that? You don't have to name who said these things if you don't?
JOHNSON: Yeah, absolutely. It's actually the sort of nascence of this book was around a moment I had when I was going to the river around Portland, Oregon and I had met someone new and was like, oh, this might be a new friend and we went down to this one spot at the river that's kind of in the suburbs of Portland. And we came around the corner and she just said something really horrible about like these fat, disgusting white trash people that were like taking up our space. And I did not respond in that moment, but it really was a big turning point for me.
DINGMAN: Yeah. What a phrase our space, I mean.
JOHNSON: Yeah. And then I was like, wait, I don't, I don't think I want to be. Give me one the other hour. Take me back.
DINGMAN: Yeah. Well, one of the other really fascinating sequences in your essay is where you write about having this realization that the cultural perceptions that underpin the notion of quote “poor white trash” are stitched into a lot of what many people think of as classic literature. And there's this great part where you talk about putting yellow sticky notes on the pages of the books where you find evidence of prejudice or judgment. Can you describe any of those instances that you remember literally flagging?
JOHNSON: Yes and “Madame Bovary,” I think I just noticed any time they talked about like servants basically and like the filthy servants or any time that the main character was like expressing fear or lament or disgust around possibly slipping into or back into a life of low wages. And the same thing happened with “House of Mirth.” I flagged every single page where the narrator referred to dinginess.
DINGMAN: Yeah. But one of my favorite parts of, of the piece is where you talk about feeling like those passages were actually the phrase you use is oddly affirming. Tell me what you, what you meant by oddly affirming.
JOHNSON: They at least felt very honest because it is really difficult to be impoverished and falling into poverty or into this state of like abjection is really for a lot of us, a death sentence and both of those characters die. It just felt very like, yep, this is real.
DINGMAN: Yeah. I thought this could be a nice moment to ask you to read a paragraph from the essay. It's the one right after you talk about these authors knowing that there is quote, a close kinship between poverty and death.
JOHNSON: Yeah. Absolutely.
Poor and dead had also been kin in AP U.S. history where I finished reading a section about the Haymarket Massacre and the struggle for the eight-hour work day. Then paused to stare at my reflection in the trash can of water next to my desk. I was careful not to get any of the liquid on my arms or head. Mr. Smith had warned us about the possibility of asbestos. As I stared at a slice of my face in the rippling water. I considered that many of our parents could not find jobs that offered full time hours or paid a living wage. What use is an eight-hour workday when there is no work day to work or when the wage on offer is a violation of one's humanity. Living in a trash town, the prevailing feeling is of nihilism.
DINGMAN: Thank you for reading that. Do you remember as a kid in, in high school or, or earlier having a feeling that you would have called nihilism or is that something that you have been able to identify more looking back at that time.
JOHNSON: Unfortunately, I felt it growing up for sure. Like the first time I remember really feeling it, I was about 5 years old and, and this was actually interestingly enough, we had just returned from a summer where I lived in a trailer on a horse ranch outside of Phoenix, Arizona. My mom and brother and I, my mom was single, like 22 years old, making minimum wage at a car wash. And we just lived in a really under resource neighborhood and I remember just standing outside of that house and looking around and I think my mom said something like you can't really play outside here. And I just was like, man, if this is life, I don't know if I want a part of it, you know.
DINGMAN: Yeah. Yeah. Was that your experience of, of that summer that you spent in the trailer around that time or did that feel different?
JOHNSON: That felt like such a beautiful and strange adventure. Part of it was that I wasn't around any other kids. And so maybe that kind of allowed me to feel a little bit more free from comparison that I often felt to other kids in my hometown. And yeah, I just kind of went around riding horses. We went to this bar called the Macapani. I wonder if it's still there. And they let me in there and like, I played pool and darts. I don't know, it was a really, it was a really beautiful and strange summer.
DINGMAN: That's an incredible scene. The idea of this 5 year old kid being led into a bar to play pool and darts because there's a version of culture where that would be looked at as scandalous or irresponsible. But it sounds like in this environment, it was a sense for you of being included.
JOHNSON: Very much. It felt like being a part of kind of a little happy family or a community. And I felt extremely welcomed. And I think that's part of the feeling that I returned to through the writing of this book and kind of reflecting back on that moment when at the river with the new friend who was like, this is our space and they're in it where I was like, no, but wait, like I love these people.
DINGMAN: Yeah. It makes me think actually about you reminisce about your, I believe it's your great grandmother who you call granny and you're talking about the multitudes that she contains that the term white trash can't possibly convey.
JOHNSON: Absolutely. I spent a lot of time with her just really at her elbow, like peeling potatoes onto the drain board and like I watched her kill a rattlesnake with a shovel like she was just such a powerful woman and I think had a very political consciousness as well, really focused on labor. She had been a sharecropper and worked in kind of multi-racial farming situations in the south.
So she really was, you know, white trash as outsiders would define it in that she was part of this working, you know, multi-racial, working class. And, you know, when she died, I didn't like inherit a bunch of jewelry or anything. You know, it was like just this empowered way of living. She wasn't at anyone's mercy.
DINGMAN: It's so funny that you were just joking that you didn't inherit any jewelry from her, but you used the term badge of honor earlier. And it seems like you did inherit something about that from her.
JOHNSON: Yeah, that's really beautiful. I hadn't thought of that.
DINGMAN: Well, Jaydra Johnson is a writer and the author of an essay that we've been talking about that was published in Lit Hub called “How a Legacy of Poverty and systemic exclusion created white trash in America.” But Jaydra is also the author of the new book, “Low Notes on Art and Trash.”
