When author Natasha Carthew was growing up in rural Cornwall she was a ferocious reader but also a frustrated one, where were all the other poor working-class gay girls? And why is class still the forgotten corner of diversity?
Growing up in a one parent family in a council house in rural Cornwall, the world I read about in books and saw on TV (when we could afford the 50 pence for the meter) could have defined another planet. It was a world made up of the same generic components; a housewife mum (mine worked a billion cleaning jobs) and a working dad (mine didn’t and left us to fend for ourselves) who lived in a nice house that they actually owned, they also had a car and a telephone whilst we had the once a day bus and the village telephone box. Obviously all this didn’t matter to us as kids because we were loved and cared for, but how many young people apart from the other kids on the estate did I read about that had similar experiences to me? I was a ferocious reader but also a frustrated one, where were all the other poor working-class gay girls? They weren’t in books. Where were the stories that gave me a sense of belonging outside of my community, the stories that should have empowered instead of isolated?
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