'The old Struggletowners, if they could see it now, would not believe their eyes.' In Struggletown, Janet McCalman takes us into the inner-city industrial working-class suburb of Richmond, in Melbourne, before the gentrification of the 1970s. This is a narrative richly informed by the voices and memories of those who lived there during this time-the Struggletowners themselves-as well as by McCalman's familiarity with the objects, buildings and topography of their physical environment and her impressive awareness of larger social forces, structures and patterns. As urban life continues to develop in new directions and complex human and political relations suggest new futures, the difficulty and necessity of remembering, now, also lends this classic work a palpable new relevance.
